Zippy’s – Taryn Fukuji

Reducing support calls and time-to-order with 55% fewer clicks

Streamlining Zippy’s holiday orders for peak seasonal volume

ROLE

Product Designer

TIMELINE

12 weeks
(March - June 2025)
Launching Oct 2025

TEAM

2 Product Designers,
2 Software Engineers, Product Manager

TOOLS

Figma, FigJam, Builder.io, Loom, Notion

OVERVIEW

Led the UX/UI strategy to redesign Zippy’s Meals-to-Go ordering experience, one of their highest-volume digital flows.

To get there, I introduced leaner ways of working: facilitating prioritization workshops, aligning early with engineers early on, and scoping features that balanced user needs with business and technical constraints.

PROBLEM

The Meals-to-Go ordering experience was outdated, confusing, and disconnected from Zippy's main site.

AGITATE

During the holidays, this flow generates hundreds of orders and an overwhelming spike in support calls, especially from kūpuna (seniors).

SOLUTION

Our team set out to reduce call volume by 30% and simplify the ordering flow so local families could navigate with ease.

RESULTS & IMPLEMENTATION

Key Achievements

🔻

Reduced clicks in the date/time picker by 55%

📞

Potential to reduce customer calls by 30%

⏰

Reduced overall ordering time from ~15 minutes to under 8 minutes

👩🏻‍💻

Delivered developer-ready Figma files aligned with Zippy’s component library

🚀

Successfully implemented designs into working software, launching October 2025

👵🏽

Prioritized accessibility for seniors, who are Zippy’s main holiday customers

FINAL SOLUTION

Built to reduce friction and support holiday demand

Date & time picker interaction

Faster, clearer scheduling. We reduced decision points to just two valid dates and added clear time windows.

Package availability at a glance

Users can now see which packages are available at each location. No extra clicks or second-guessing. Option to filter search if needed.

Package details with clearer hierarchy

Decluttered and scannable. We restructured the package detail layout with clear visual hierarchy and grouped add-ons to reduce overwhelm.

Map view toggle on mobile

Most users didn’t use the map, so we made it optional, giving space back to what matters most: choosing the right location with the package they need. The map previously lived below the search bar, hiding the location cards.

THE CHALLENGE

Meals-to-Go lived on a separate site, making ordering feel disconnected

Zippy’s offered Meals to Go for years, but the online ordering experience hadn’t kept up. The system lived on a separate third-party site, disconnected from Zippy’s main platform. During peak holidays, like Thanksgiving and Christmas, confusion spiked for both customers and internal teams.

Roughly 20% of Meals-to-Go orders triggered support calls

Of those, 75% required staff to walk users through the site step by step

Our Goal

Streamline ordering, reduce drop-off, and surface key info earlier for families trying to feed 10+ people during one of
the busiest times of the year.

RESEARCH & INSIGHTS

Insights from the Zippy’s team and community members shaped our roadmap

To ground our work in real-world pain points, we conducted interviews with both internal stakeholders from Zippy's team (Loyalty, Digital Strategy, Operations, and Customer Service) and Meals-to-Go customers, including seniors.

1. Overwhelming number of
unavailable dates shown

2. Unclear which packages were
available at each location

Danica W.
Loyalty & Customer Insights

"The date selector is not intuitive and provides too many dates that aren't even available."

Annonymous
Zippy's Customer

"What packages are available at the Kaneohe location? It's hard to tell. "

3. Disjointed system lead to
user confusion

4. Seniors frequently struggled to complete the flow without assistance

Marissa O.
Digital Strategies

"Customers think MTG can be found in the app; it's two separate systems."

Melissa Joy D.
Digital Strategies

"Customers (especially kūpuna) were confused about designating add-on items & labeling."

IDEA SKETCHING

Sketching toward clarity

Before jumping into Figma, we explored early concepts through quick sketches, from simplifying the date picker to making package availability more obvious.

These low-fidelity ideas helped us align on direction, discuss feasibility with engineers, and think broadly before narrowing in. Below is the process of sketches for the date/time picker from initial exploration to a refined wireflow.

INITIAL EXPLORATION

Click image to zoom!

REFINED IDEAS

Click image to zoom!

A/B TESTING

Why we ditched the legend after
testing with 30+ users

We tested two versions of the location tags:

Option A: Text labels (e.g., “Whole Turkey,” “Half Package”)
Option B: Icons with a legend at the top

And observed a clear generational split:

Ages 60+ (kūpuna) preferred Option A: text labels were easier to understand and avoided referring to a legend.
Ages 20–40 preferred Option B: icons felt cleaner.

Since seniors make up a large portion of Zippy’s holiday customer base (and were more likely to call in when confused) we prioritized clarity over minimalism. We moved forward with Option A ✅

Text labels
(preferred by ages 60+)

Icons + legend
(preferred by ages 20 - 40)

DESIGN IMPROVEMENTS

Product decisions that
made the biggest impact

1. The new picker makes it clear there are only two pickup dates and set window slots

(slide bar below to reveal the before/after!👇)

❌ Includes unavailable pickup dates

❌ Too many pickup options made available

❌ Used vague language like “ASAP” or “Later.”

✅ Clear labels for the two valid pickup dates

✅ Time window buttons with AM/PM toggle

✅ Removed unnecessary date options

2. Improved decision-making by showing package availability on location cards

❌ No indicators of packages available at different Zippy's locations

❌ Users had to click into each location to see what packages were offered

❌ Mirrors standard location selector with no unique experienec for holiday-specific needs

✅ Users can scan and choose a pickup spot with confidence, so they’re not guessing what’s available

✅ Speeds up ordering process by making critical info visible upfront

3. Improved scanability by restructuring content
and visual hierarchy

❌ Users are taken to a separate site when ordering, creating a disconnect in ordering experience and visual branding

❌ Add-ons selection lacked clarity and visual structure

❌ Overly worded layout and lack of hierarchy makes content hard to read

✅ Cohesive experience that integrates Meals-to-Go as part of the Zippy's main ordering experience

✅ Clear separation between included items and add-ons

✅ Less dense copy for option to 'read more' if needed

BUMPS IN THE ROAD

Initiating async stakeholder feedback

Our main stakeholder, Zippy's Manager of Digital Strategies, was managing multiple priorities and couldn’t always join meetings.

To adapt, I initiated async Loom walkthroughs of our designs, highlighting key questions and inviting comments from the Zippy's Digital Strategies team. This kept feedback flowing without slowing us down.

MORE BUMPS IN THE ROAD

We faced scope, technical, and stakeholder challenges... and adapted

Not everything we designed could be built within the timeline due to engineering contraints:

1. Editing an order post-checkout was too complex to implement due to back-end limitations.

2. Including inventory updates for each package type, required engineers to build an entirely new inventory tracking system, something that was out of scope for our project timeline.

Instead of dropping it entirely, we:

Designed and documented the full ideal flow
Included it in our Figma handoff as a "Phase 2 Recommendation." This way, Zippy’s internal UX designer could revisit it later.

HIGH FIDELITY

A better, faster, more intuitive ordering
experience. Live this Fall

REFLECTION

Takeaways I’ll carry into every product design role

💡What I would've done differently

Tested post-checkout flows more deeply. With more time, I would've run additional usability tests around confirmation and next steps. We scoped editing an order as a Phase 2 feature, but I wanted to explroe how to build more confidence right after checkout.
Looped in customer service earlier. Their frontline insights were incredibly valuable. If we had involved them in design reviews sooner, we might've uncovered small UX wins even faster.

🌺 Why local context matters

Local context creates better tech. Growing up with brands like Zippy’s helped us design more thoughtfully because we already understood the people we were designing for.
We weren’t just building a product, we were building trust. Every interaction, every decision, was shaped by personal investment and community ties. That changed how I think about design entirely.
Tech built by locals, not just for locals, leads to better outcomes. And this project reminded me that the future of Hawaiʻi tech should be rooted in both skill and aloha.

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let's connect!

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