The Challenge

The African continent often lacks digital solutions that are already common in other parts of the world. The Angolan startup Mamboo recognized this landscape and, during the pandemic, saw its delivery app enter and grow within the Angolan market.

Despite a promising start, the app still had inconsistencies in its user experience, difficulty dealing with regional constraints (inaccurate GPS), and a low conversion rate: fewer than 24% of items added to the cart were actually purchased.

Objectives

At the beginning of 2022, Mamboo's operations were still restricted to the Luanda metropolitan area, but they called on Marte for an ambitious challenge: to help them scale their delivery service across the entire African continent.

It was necessary to fix the identified pain points and highlight the other services offered by the company. But the result went even further! Innovative features tailored to the local culture were added, along with a complete, brand-new Design System.

Creating Value

Analyzing the challenge revealed the following scenario: the Mamboo app was still seen predominantly as a food delivery app, and its other features were underutilized. Therefore, it was important that the solution generated be efficient in reinforcing the other value propositions present in the service, while being careful not to "disrupt" the usage habits already adopted by its audience. Check out the three main benefits of the project:

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Key Benefits

1. Improved Experience: Refining the experience of features already adopted by users based on field results.
2. Service Expansion: Transforming other Mamboo services—such as the digital wallet, package delivery, etc.—to achieve an engaging experience.
3. Conversion and Retention: Fixing the payment flow to increase/ensure the conversion of items in the cart and encourage the use of MambooPay.

Secondary Benefits:

1. Cultural Adaptation: Developing an identity and user experiences that align with local characteristics to encourage consumer identification.
2. Focus on Innovation: Creating innovative features for the segment, such as a friend network for order referrals, payment splitting options, and more.
3. Scalability: Structuring flows and a Design System that are scalable and prepared for expansion into other countries.

Framework

For this challenge, we chose a classic design framework: the Double Diamond. Throughout the process, the team included experts in research, service design, UX/UI, and more. This model enabled effective immersion and mapping of the project's challenges—using in-depth interviews and extensive benchmarking—to transform them into key insights and criteria for the experience design and the new app's screens.

Process Highlights

• In-depth interviews with Mamboo users and users of international competitors.
• Benchmarking of direct competitors as well as major international players.
• In-depth heuristic analysis of the existing application.
• Different user journeys and flows to map pain points and opportunities.
• Remote workshop sessions for brainstorming.
• Creation of an exclusive design system for Mamboo.