Same-Day Delivery Redesign
Redesigning the guest’s experience with same day delivery orders
The same-day delivery (SDD) checkout process is a frequently used flow, with many guests depending on the process to get their urgent orders delivered. But an update was sorely needed and the SDD team did not have the time or resources to delegate towards it.
Role: Over the course of ~4 months, I led the UX design of a solution to improve how multi-package orders are communicated across the Target app.
Background: Following the project I’d worked on during my time on the ship-to-home team, I was excited to flex what I’d learned on a larger scale project. Utilizing my engineering knowledge as well as familiarity with Target’s design systems library and best practices I attempted to combine my newfound knowledge on a larger scale design flow.
Role
Lead UX Designer
Timeline
4 Months
Status
To be implemented
in 2026
The never ending list of delivery times
Taking a heuristic evaluation of the current flow, it was obvious why it wasn't ideal. The flow technically worked in that guests are able to checkout successfully, but compared to other parts of the website, it was looking outdated.
The cramped nature of the UI discouraged future feature development, and was arguably costing the user time in having to look through all the available delivery options. More time and steps may risk the user deciding not to complete their purchase, especially since guests ordering SDD in particular are usually looking to receive their items fast and checkout fast.
Depending on the day selected, the user may have a very long list of delivery times to choose from.
Special requests may be redundant with instructions. Should it live here?
Could delivery instructions live in the Address block?
SDD Current Checkout flow
Hypothesis: By surfacing less delivery times, the user will be able to checkout more efficiently and more confidently.
Shipt Research: 2 Hour Delivery Windows?
One of my initial design considerations was listing delivery slots by 2 hour increments instead of 1 hour as this could reduce the height of the list by 50%.
Coincidentally, a Target owned company Shipt had recently conducted research around user behavior in regards to delivery windows. 6 Users were asked whether they preferred 1 or 2 hour delivery windows. Looking at this research, user’s strongly felt they liked the flexibility of delivery options but wanted control over when their order will be delivered.
After analyzing the Shipt research, I decided to prioritize solutions showing 1 hour window slots to help provide user’s with more of a sense of confidence in their orders.
6/6 participants
chose 1 hour over 2 hours windows.
Delivery windows <2 hours were considered “too long” and associated with other types of work (such as home repairs or cable installations).
Competitor Strategies
Looking at our competitors, companies like Walmart were taking advantage of their space and up-selling express delivery options. Walmart also utilizes 2 hour windows to shorten their delivery lists. However, upon researching users preferred having the 1 hour windows, not liking the ambiguity of 2 hours for when a delivery could happen. Amazon combines their SDD option window with regular shipping, offering SDD potentially depending on when the order is placed or if a minimum dollar amount is reached.
How might we help users understand when an order contains multiple packages, so they can feel secure and prevent unnecessary customer service contact?”
Iterative Solutions in Figma
In particular, I took 4 design solutions to critique and conducted dot voting to help administer first round of user testing. The two solutions that performed the best were eventually transformed into the design for the first round of user testing.
Idea 1: Accordion Structure
In order to attempt to lessen the cognitive load for the user at a glance, I created a accordion solution in which the user would be shown a 3 time slots per day, with the option to expand out and view more times. However, from an accessibility perspective this solution could be difficult for users utilizing voice control. However, I liked how this design could help reduce the amount of options user’s had to choose from on a first look.
Variation
Idea 2: Delivery time v Scheduled Delivery
This solution assumes the user will select the first delivery time available, therefore selecting it automatically for them. As an alternative, the user could choose to Schedule Delivery to display more times.
Even though the time savings for a guest could be large, the solution had many potential pit falls. In the case where a guest fails to notice the selected delivery time, they may feel upset and stressed upon checkout if they failed to realize what time they had actually selected by checkout.
Round 1 of User testing
After iterating upon the 2 favorite solutions, I created a prototype that would surface less times in chip format with a modal that would open to display more times to the user. This solution makes the assumption that the user will want their order as soon as possible (data shows most users are ordering SDD due to urgency).
Overall, these tests performed well. After sharing these designs out with the broader team as well as design systems pointed out inconsistencies such as the “View more times” not being consistent with other actionable items on the page. The okay to delivery early checkbox also was distracting in a grey box, so I wondered if there was an alternative design for this as well.
5/5 were able to open the modal to view more times
“It’s very clear that the order will arrive in 3 packages.” -Female, age 20
“Seeing ‘3 packages’ next to the order total makes it easier to understand.” -Male, age 36
3/5 liked chips.
2/5 wondered if a design with radio buttons would be easier to read.
“I’m not sure if the date is for all packages or just the last one.” -Female, age 20
“Would it be clearer if each package had its own date shown instead?” -Male, age 36
Round 2 of User Testing: Delivery Instructions
In order to try and further cleanup the SDD section, I wondered if moving delivery instructions to address would feel more natural and therefore help users move through the flow quicker and more successfully. This prototype was also tested since Target had made updates such that address was now being saved in user’s profile. This design could potentially be consistent with those updates as well.
SDD feature is disabled while editing address
Overall, these tests performed well. But design systems pointed out inconsistencies such as the “View more times” not being consistent with other actionable items on the page.
Participants also brought up potential concerns around if their instructions were saved by default and if they had not realized - would potentially want different instructions.
5/5 successfully edited their address
“It’s very clear that the order will arrive in 3 packages.” -Female, age 20
“Seeing ‘3 packages’ next to the order total makes it easier to understand.” -Male, age 36
3/5 wfelt unclear that address would be saved for next time.
“I’m not sure if the date is for all packages or just the last one.” -Female, age 20
“Would it be clearer if each package had its own date shown instead?” -Male, age 36
Round 3: AB User Testing
After many rounds of user testing and gathering data, myself and other designers still felt the lingering question: chips vs list? After all, the list format was used in many part of Target. Though, part of my hesitancy came from the sort of embedded design that a list would end up having as well as alignment to other features in the section. In order to help clarify any doubts, I ran an AB test to see if chips or list would perform significantly better.
Participants were able to successfully complete all tasks in both tests. Therefore, I used language and comments to determine which solution to go with as well as how easy/hard it’d be to add features such as upselling in these designs. I felt that the embedded design had potential alignment issues
5/5 successfully edited their address
“It’s very clear that the order will arrive in 3 packages.” -Female, age 20
“Seeing ‘3 packages’ next to the order total makes it easier to understand.” -Male, age 36
3/5 wfelt unclear that address would be saved for next time.
“I’m not sure if the date is for all packages or just the last one.” -Female, age 20
“Would it be clearer if each package had its own date shown instead?” -Male, age 36
In line vs Modal?
Due to deciding between address and SDD for certain features to live, I also had to decide where it made sense to use a modal versus editing inline.
Final Prototype
After several rounds of critique, user testing and iterating, I designed my final solution. Since desktop offers slighlty more real estate, this version would be used to expand the chips while on mobile web they would stack vertically.
Due to address being owned by another team, they felt delivery instructions was not quite ready to be moved into SDD due to the other areas of Target this could affect. For now, it will remain in SDD but with the potential and user research to make the best decision on it going forward. Since it would remain in SDD, I decided to keep it in a modal to stay aligned with the behavior with the other features in SDD.
Special Instructions
After proposing this feature be removed, designers mentioned the use cases in which special instructions is used. I still felt strongly that special instructions did not belong in SDD and moving it elsewhere could help provide clarity and create a faster checkout experience. Currently on mobile, this feature lives in cart so perhaps the most natural case is to move it there.
Looking ahead
After meeting with the engineering team, this work is slated for being on the roadmap for Q1 of 2026. The engineers were confident that data should be safe and available. This design will help provide Target options for adding more features as well, or upselling Target circle’s membership.
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