Food delivery fiasco

This is part of my ongoing series exploring frustrating user experiences we encounter in everyday life. These real-world UX failures show how design thinking often forgets the humans who use products and services.

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You recently moved house, after a day of hard work, renovating with a friend - you pick the easy food route. After all, both of you are exhausted and the kitchen isn’t even close to being useful. You’re going to order some food online.

You have to log in. No option to even see menu’s without a log in. Sigh. Slightly frustrated, you register an account, and upon registration, the app tells you ‘you already have an account’. OK, you knew that, you just forgot.

You try to log in with your common passwords. After several attempts, it is time to give up - you’ll need to use the reset password functionality. After a password reset, a back-and-forth between the app and e-mail, you manage to quickly order food. Two pizza’s pepperoni from your favorite place incoming. It has been a while, but these pizza’s have always been good. You inform your friend. Food has been ordered.

It takes a while.

You hear your friend’s stomach growling, you mention it should be here anytime. The mood is deteriorating by the minute.

After 1 hour, you get a message from the app. Food must be on the way. As you check the message you notice it says ‘Did you like your order?’. Why would they ask that if the food isn’t even here yet?

You check your e-mail.

The pizza’s have been delivered to your old house.

Design isn’t just about aesthetics—it’s about function. When design fails, we feel immediate frustration, even if we don’t recognize it as a design problem. These moments aren’t just annoyances—they’re design failures, symptoms of a deeper problem. Each represents a failure of design thinking, where creators lost sight of the actual humans who would use their products and systems.