GEagle Maps

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the previously mundane task of grocery shopping has become complicated. Shoppers are nervous, so they want to move quickly and minimize their time in the store.

Problem: Knowing exactly where to go in the store is crucial for an efficient shopping trip, but shoppers who are in unfamiliar stores or who are looking for infrequently bought items often have to wander. Shoppers are also wary of touching too many things, including their own devices, after coming into contact with items and people in the store.

Solution: To address these two issues, we created a responsive solution, which works across desktop, phone, and smart watch, that maps out an in-store route based on the user’s grocery list.

Our initial challenge was broad: design responsive web screens that support grocery shopping during a pandemic. Through our own research, we narrowed down our scope to address the need for a responsive solution that would allow shoppers to decrease time spent wandering a grocery store in search of items, maintain access to their grocery lists, and minimize contact with their devices.

The work on this project was a collaborative team effort, with all members of the team partaking in each stage of the project, from initial research to ideation and testing. In addition, I took on a leadership role: I wrote the interview protocol used in the research phase, created the customer journey map template, facilitated group discussions throughout the course of the project to ensure we were making good progress, and led the creation and editing of our pitch.

> Amanda Crawford
> Shalini Rao
> Jeremy Wang

We first wanted to understand how people were currently grocery shopping so that we could narrow in on problem areas and find opportunities to improve the experience. I wrote an interview guide for the team, and we collectively conducted 12 directed storytelling interviews with participants that had recently shopped for groceries, either in person or using an online grocery service. We asked them to tell us about the last time they went grocery shopping or to describe their most memorable grocery shopping trip in the hopes that we could understand especially good or especially bad aspects of the shopping experience.

After my first couple of interviews, I found four distinct phases of grocery shopping: at home, on the way to the store, in the store, and back at home. With these phases in mind, I created two customer journey maps, one for each of my first two participants. The team decided to use them as a template to create their own participants’ customer journey maps after their interviews. These maps allowed us to illustrate each participant’s actions, emotions, and pain points, throughout each phase of the grocery shopping process.

We then created a consolidated map in order to understand common experiences from all the interviews and find areas of opportunity where we could focus a redesign.

We found that during the pandemic, grocery shoppers were most concerned with the in-store phase, so we decided to focus on that area for further analysis. I led the team in a discussion to identify findings, insights, and implications.

With all this in mind, we developed a problem statement:

After creating a list of initial ideas, we settled on a route planner, as it was the solution with the most potential to make the in-store experience more convenient and efficient. We then got to work prototyping and discussing features.

Given the activity and environment, we knew we wanted to design for both wearable (smart watch) and mobile interfaces, as they are portable and accessible while walking around a store. Smart watches allow users to interact with minimal contact and without the burden of having to switch between holding a mobile device and grabbing groceries. For those without a smart watch or who prefer to work on a larger interface, mobile is available.

We also saw from our research that the grocery shopping experience starts at home, when users prepare their lists by checking what they need and still have access to a computer. Therefore, we wanted to include a desktop interface.

In creating a responsive solution across such different screen sizes, we needed to understand what our core features were and pare down to those most critical for each screen environment. As we moved through the rest of the design process, we prioritized our focus there.

We first needed to understand what those core features would be. After discussion, we decided we wanted them to include:
> navigation: to help shoppers find their items
> view and edit list: to allow flexibility
> check off items: to help shoppers understand their progress

We then began sketching ideas for smart watch and mobile, as those were the smaller screens and therefore had to have only the most basic features.

We conducted a think-aloud interview using our sketches with other designers in order to receive initial feedback on the core functionalities. We then used what we learned for further iteration.

We then iterated to mid-fidelity and included the changes from the think-aloud. I co-led the presentation to fellow designers and asked follow-up questions to clarify feedback and ensure we were meeting our research goals.

This brought us to our final responsive web app solution that lets the user:

Input their list:

We pitched this to other designers as if we were pitching directly to our client. I helped lead the creation of our pitch script, helping assign sections, writing my own part, and editing the script as a whole. I also contributed to the pitch deck by preparing my own section and editing the deck.