Making Swiggy's Order Tracking a Magical Experience
Article Summary
Swiggy discovered customers were anxiously checking their order tracking screen multiple times during the 20-45 minute delivery window. Their solution? Let users track orders while doing literally anything else on their phone.
The Swiggy engineering team implemented Picture-in-Picture (PIP) mode for their Android app's order tracking feature. This case study walks through the technical implementation, challenges with Android's multi-window mode, and early adoption metrics.
Key Takeaways
- 30,000+ PIP impressions within first week of launch (Android O+ only)
- Implemented in just 2 days using Android's native PIP APIs
- Multi-activity architecture created duplicate task issues in recent apps
- Deep-linking broke when users clicked notifications during PIP mode
- Solution requires refactoring to single-activity navigation pattern
Swiggy reduced order anxiety by enabling floating order tracking that persists across apps, achieving 30K+ weekly PIP views despite being limited to Android O+ devices.
About This Article
When users entered Picture-in-Picture mode in Swiggy, multiple app instances would show up in recent tasks. This made the experience feel disjointed and confusing.
The team fixed this by finishing other activity tasks before entering PIP mode. They also used PipUtils utilities to keep recent tasks from appearing during state transitions.
Now users can multitask smoothly. The floating order tracker stays visible across different apps without messing up the app's task stack or navigation.