A remote usability study on the McDonald's mobile ordering app. Eight participants, three task scenarios, one clear conclusion: brand recognition only gets you to the download. The interface has to do the rest.
McDonald's is one of the most recognisable brands in fast food. But recognition alone doesn't survive a competitive market. As the mobile app is the primary ordering surface for many customers, we wanted to know whether it was actually carrying its weight.
We ran a preliminary heuristic evaluation that surfaced potential issues, then designed and conducted a structured usability study to test those issues with real users. The output was a prioritised set of recommendations the team could act on.
We recruited eight participants in their early to mid twenties. Half were existing McDonald's app users, half had never used it before. All had some experience buying fast food. Participants were asked to download the app prior to the session but received no preview of what the test would involve.
Sessions were run remotely over Zoom, with participants screen-sharing their phones while the team observed and took notes. Each recording was reviewed afterward to code observations consistently across sessions.
Participants worked through three task scenarios, each chosen to surface a different kind of friction:
Across all eight participants and three tasks, certain issues showed up again and again. We coded each issue, counted instances, and surfaced the most frequent ones for the team to prioritise.
Below is a breakdown of the key issues that emerged in each task, paired with the design improvements we'd recommend.
We grouped recommendations into urgent (issues actively losing users) and minor (issues worth fixing but less critical). The order matters: fixing the urgent ones first protects revenue and user trust.
Users couldn't find favourites. The current placement costs the company orders from returning customers, which is exactly who favourites is for.
The app lacks signifiers and onboarding. Users are dropped into the experience and expected to figure it out. Add lightweight tooltips and clearer iconography.
The current sign-up flow is the single biggest abandonment risk. Allow guest checkout, and only collect what's strictly necessary upfront.
"Big Mac Extra Value Meal" should not require digging. A dedicated meals section solves this and helps upsell.
Breakfast items disappear when breakfast ends, but users want to order ahead. Let the menu reflect ordering windows, not preparation windows.
A search bar without suggestions is a dead-end. Add live results as users type so they aren't punished for spelling.
Across all three tasks, the same shape of problem repeated itself: users struggled with feature discovery, the sign-up was heavier than it needed to be, and items were buried where users wouldn't intuitively look for them. None of these are unfixable. Most are decisions that have drifted out of alignment with how customers actually use the app.
The result is a product that benefits from the McDonald's brand more than it deserves. The brand opens the door, the app has to do the rest.
Brand gets you the download. Interface earns the second order.
This was my first end-to-end usability study with a real team and a clear deliverable. Three things stuck:
One, recruiting the right participants is half the project. Mixing new and existing users gave us range we wouldn't have had with a single audience.
Two, consistency between facilitators is harder than it looks. We had to align on phrasing of tasks and instructions early to make findings comparable across sessions.
Three, frequency tells you what to fix; severity tells you what to fix first. Both matter, and they're not the same.