Bocado

How do you keep someone smiling while they wait for their food?

That was the small question behind Bocado, and it quietly became the big one.
Not “how to design another delivery app”, but “how to make the wait feel less like waiting”.

Deliveries aren’t instantaneous.
They are moments of expectation, time that users often spend refreshing screens or feeling unsure if their order is on track.

Bocado was conceived as a concept where that waiting time itself becomes part of the experience.

Services:

• Concept design
• Mobile experience
• Interaction exploration

Industry:

• Food Delivery
• Mobile Apps
• Engagement Design

The team:

• Concept lead
• UX/UI design (me)

Year:

2024

What is Bocado

The idea behind Bocado started with a simple insight:
People don’t just want their food delivered. They want something good during the time before it arrives.

Existing delivery platforms present a map and a timer.
Bocado imagined that while you’re waiting, you might rather play with your food — literally — or earn points — not because you have to, but because it feels fun.

If the wait was long, engagement becomes part of the service, not a distraction from it.

Project overview

This wasn’t a client brief. It was a design exploration with real intention.

The concept asked: what if the app did more than track a route? What if it respected time and attention and offered something that made the wait feel shorter, more pleasant, and more rewarding?

Instead of philosophizing about loyalty programs or badges, the idea grounded itself in the everyday: a small game, subtle interactions, and mechanics that feel natural in a delivery context.

The result wasn’t a finished product, but a sequence of screens and flows that treat waiting as part of the experience rather than an interruption of it.

Scope of work

The work focused on mobile interactions and engagement logic.

Screens were designed so that:

  • the delivery process still feels clear,

  • the core actions (browse, order, track) remain frictionless,

  • the “waiting moment” becomes an optional path for playful interaction or earning points,

  • visuals and motion keep a light tone without feeling childish or distracting.

Prototypes were laid out in Figma with enough structure to imagine real use, but open enough to evolve if this concept had become a live product.

Final result

What came out of it wasn’t a polished app you’d publish tomorrow.

It was a family of screens and ideas that show how an app could treat waiting as a moment of value.

People often judge a service by its gaps — not its features.
In delivery, the biggest gap is time spent waiting.

In testing the concept internally and in small design reviews, the idea resonated because it didn’t just add a game. It respected that there is real user attention in those minutes before arrival — and treated it like something worth designing for.

Bocado became less about food delivery, and more about the experience around food, inviting people to stay engaged rather than glance and close the app.

Key takeaways

Not all design work ends in a launched product.
Some of it ends in an understanding — a slight shift in how you see user behavior.

Bocado reminded me that waiting is part of the customer journey too, and that attention during downtime can be shaped with intention.

If you think of every idle moment as blank real estate, you’ll start seeing opportunities — not obstacles.