GROCERY SHOPPING SOFTWARE RESEARCH

PROBLEM/CHALLENGE

From making out a grocery list to hunting and pecking in a supermarket, grocery shopping is a hassle for most people. A lot of time is spent on these activities, however, if efficiency could be improved, it would free up users’ time to do the things they really love to do.

OBJECTIVE

Explore software solutions that might improve the efficiency of creating grocery lists and grocery shopping.

APPROACH

Interview users to discover out how they create their grocery lists and how they grocery shop. Based off user needs and behavior evaluation, create storyboards that speak to the software solution. Move forward with digital prototypes and begin testing the direction.

What if software could improve the overall experience of grocery shopping? What would that software look like?

Although a handful of software solutions exist today to ease the burden of creating grocery lists, some of the most technologically-savvy people still use pen and paper. This could be because on the the surface, hand writing a list seems to be the easiest and most straightforward solution. Or it could be argued that none of the current software solutions meet the needs of the users. Users likewise have additional inefficient experiences with grocery shopping.

A market exists for a digital solution: software that is convenient to use, has a shallow learning curve, and saves users’ time. Below I explore what that digital solution might look like.

The Process

NEEDFINDING

Over 90% of new products introduced into the marketplace fail. A good portion of these failures are due to lack of understanding of end consumers and their needs.

Through contextual inquiries with user interviews, my goal with this project was to uncover user needs, breakdowns, clever hacks, and opportunities to solve existing problems. Beyond observation, this research was instrumental in triggering additional thoughts on design innovation that could lead to better overall solutions.

MARTHA

Occupation: Web content manager and writer
Grocery lists: Paper

Martha really hates grocery shopping. She says it's a traumatic experience – there are huge baskets, lots of people, and grocery shopping eats up her time. Going to HEB, a large local grocery chain, completely overwhelms her.

• Starts her grocery list by listing staple items
• Shopping habits change depending on time of year
• Prices matter; likes comparing prices across multiple stores
• Always goes to the same 2-3 stores in her neighborhood; multiple stores are involved since certain stores carry specific items
• Interested in where food comes from; believes in buying local food for the best-tasting food
• Interested in becoming more aware of how animals are treated (are the chickens free roaming or are they housed in cages?)
• Likes to shop for cold food items last, however since some other items are located near the cold items, finds herself going back and forth several times in one store

CHERI

Occupation: MBA student studying to become an IT manager
Grocery lists: Paper

Cheri hates to go grocery shopping more than once a week. She can't stand it when she forgets something and has to make an unexpected additional trip to the grocery store.

• Even though she is very tech savvy, she makes her grocery lists on Post-It notes. She uses one of the smallest Post-Its available (3"x3") and writes very small because she grew up in a household where wasting paper was a sin
• Doesn't carry Post-Its around with her, so if she remembers a grocery list addition when she’s out, she looks for any scrap of paper she can write it down on until she can add it to the Post-It note at home – very inconvenient
• If she’s at home in the shower and notices that she's low on soap, she runs from the shower to her Post-It note so that she doesn't forget to put soap on her grocery list
• Always goes to the same 2-3 stores in her neighborhood. Multiple stores are involved since certain stores carry specific items
• Often gets different grocery items every week, except for some staples that are always the same

JENNIFER

Occupation: Communications facilitator at a national nonprofit
Grocery lists: Paper and sometimes digital

Jennifer says grocery shopping is painful. It takes a long time. She was born and raised in New York City. She only moved to Austin a few years ago. In NYC, a lot of people use companies like Fresh Direct where people can select their food online and pay a small fee to have their groceries delivered.

• Begins grocery list by visiting stores online and looking at their weekly sales
• Writes out grocery list on paper and iPhone
• Always grocery shops at the same handful of stores
• For non-food items, chooses stores that 1) have good coupons 2) are close 3) run a good cash-back rewards program
• If not near grocery list when she thinks of an item that she needs, she either writes items on a Post-It note or creates a note within the iPhone Notes app
• Many times she doesn’t write down staples, since they are the same items every week
• Habits change if she’s having people over or if it’s a new season
• Makes herself try a few new things every season; would love to know when new items are in season
• Doesn’t like how long it takes to park and walk into grocery stores, however, she does enjoy walking through stores to check out new items
• Would love software that could give an on-demand estimate for how long it will take to be in and out of a particular store

FINDINGS

The method by which users create grocery lists is based on habit more than anything else. Users are aware that their methods are sometimes inefficient and inconvenient. Additionally, users recognize that they shop for the same staple foods at the same stores every week, but the act of shopping is still painful. They believe that software could be customized to fulfill their needs and wants more when it comes to the entire experience.

STORYBOARDS

“Stories are the most powerful delivery tool for information, more powerful and enduring than any other art form”. – Nancy Duarte, Resonate

Storyboards were created to visually clarify the problems that the grocery shopping software might be able to solve and to identify needs that didn't emerge during user research. Two problems were defined. The first is a couple separated by distance who tag-team when creating a grocery list. The second is Martha, one of the users from the needfinding study, who has a frustrating history of retracing her steps in grocery stores.

RAPID ELECTRONIC PROTOTYPES
made with Balsamiq Mockups

Below is one of the rapid electronic prototypes I created to explore possible user interfaces for the grocery shopping software and to experiment with flow of all the elements.

INTERACTIVE PROTOTYPES
made with Axure

I created a fully interactive prototype to test the interaction and flow of the grocery shopping software user interface. The screenshots of the interactive prototype below showcase interaction only and not design.

EVALUATION PLAN

I created an evaluation plan to facilitate structured and uniform testing of the interactive prototype. The plan guided the testing, identified what I wanted to learn, and defined my concerns/questions/goals of the test. It also specified the exact tasks users would be performing, what would determine success/failure, and how I wanted to receive the feedback (thinking aloud, questionnaire/survey, post-test interviews, etc.)

USER TESTING and RESULTS

Following the evaluation plan, I conducted another round of user testing.

1. Testing concluded that users understand the point of this app and the navigation is intuitive. Most of the feedback from the final test were small suggestions to fine tune the experience. Can the layout and/or interaction be improved? Possibly. If time permits, it would not hurt to explore alternative options to see if better ideas could be generated.

2. For this study, the total amount of time dedicated to “grocery shopping” included researching deals; creating a grocery list; and shopping for food (including transportation). Research shows that when users make a grocery list, they can spend up to 10% of their total “grocery shopping” time searching for coupons. Not including the specific activity of researching deals, creating the list and shopping for food both fluctuate from 30-60% of total time, depending on the week.

While smart phones are sometimes used to research deals and create a grocery lists, the majority of users who frequently used software performed these activities on a tablet or desktop computer. In contrast, when shopping for food, the smart phone was the more accessible device.

Based on these findings, it is recommend that the software be developed for 2–3 platforms: a smart phone app, a desktop site and/or a tablet app. Making sure the software exists in multiple forms guarantees it is accessible and gets used when the user wants to use it.

3. Even though this idea started as a fairly straightforward concept, it’s easy to see how scope creep happens, especially after needfinding. Solid project requirements would prevent this and help the project stay on track.

NEXT STEPS

This was a great start to finding a solution for creating grocery lists and grocery shopping. Next steps would involve more tweaking and testing to see if I’m on the right track with the functionality and behaviors that I’ve laid out.