Designing the Experience of Texas’ Favorite On-Demand Delivery Company
I joined Favor in 2017 as the second product designer and one of four original Product team members. What started as a product design role evolved into leading all of Product Design and Research as the company experienced explosive growth.
From scratch to scale
Over nearly four years, I had a hand in every Product team hire and major release. The company grew 3x, became the nation’s first profitable on-demand delivery company (take that, DoorDash!), and was acquired by H-E-B in 2018. That same year, Favor debuted on the Inc. 5000 list as the #1 fastest-growing company in Austin, #5 in Texas, and #138 nationally.
As Head of Product Design & Research, I managed 5 designers and 2 researchers, hiring, leveling, and growing the team. My team designed experiences for all of our marketplace’s audiences:
Consumers: Placing orders through the platform and our mobile app
Runners: Delivery drivers delivering orders to customers using the Runner mobile app
Merchant Partners: Restaurants and businesses using Favor’s merchant tools
Internal Teams: Content, Support, and Market tools powering operations
I worked closely with engineers and product managers to envision, test, and implement new features across all our products.
What I built
Core products: Touched or created most of Favor's products/core features, from consumer features to internal tools.
Research from the ground up: Created Favor's entire Product Research function, establishing practices that informed every major product decision.
Company vision: Co-led efforts to craft Favor's first product vision, aligning the organization around a shared future.
A diverse team: Grew the Product team from 4 to 18 PMs, designers, and researchers.
Favor Consumer App
Our primary consumer experience, the Favor app, available on iOS and Android. Rated 4.7⭑ in the iOS App Store, with 300k+ reviews. My team was responsible for every part of this app and end-to-end experience.
Favor Consumer Web
Our corresponding web experience for our consumers, with the same end-to-end functionality as our Favor app.
Favor Runner App
Our primary experience for our delivery drivers, the Runner app, available on iOS and Android. Rated 4.7⭑ in the iOS App Store, with 40k+ reviews. My team was also responsible for every part of this app and end-to-end experience.
Selected Projects
Serving vulnerable Texans during COVID-19 Outset
Partnered with H-E-B to rapidly design and launch a bespoke grocery ordering platform for Texas seniors at the pandemic's outset. Led the design team that created Easy Ordering & Delivery, a streamlined, list-based experience matching how seniors naturally shop, enabling vulnerable Texans to stay home safely while powering ~122,000 grocery deliveries by year's end 2020.
Redesigning consumer ratings to unlock actionable insights
Led evaluation of Favor's ratings data and discovered users had inconsistent interpretations of the rating scale (some even used one star to mean "outstanding”). Designed a new experience with standardized star explanations and quick attribute selection that increased completion rates and transformed vague feedback into actionable product insights.
Designing a unified platform for support teams
Led design and research to replace four disconnected support tools with a unified platform built from the ground up. Started with extensive contextual inquiry, observing agents at their desks to understand workflows, then designed a custom tool that consolidated chat, actions, and account management in one place. Boosted agent productivity by ~40%.
Solving inefficient Runner positioning at scale
As Favor's coverage areas expanded, our inability to guide Runners to high-demand locations created inefficiencies that cost millions in guaranteed payments. Designed a neighborhood system that replaced Favor's single-zone model with smaller, overlapping areas as markets expanded. Collaborated closely with top Runners to create interfaces that gave them freedom to choose where they worked while surfacing demand data to guide better decisions. Reduced idle time from ~18 minutes to under 10 minutes per hour and cut top-up costs from over $1 per delivery to $0.13—saving millions.