Baggie! creating better grocery shopping experience
We have to eat we have to do grocery shopping and every one of us face unavoidable circumstances.
At least we do grocery shopping twice a week, whether we run out of milk, egg, bread or something else. Most of us work or have work to do that leaves grocery shopping at the end of the day or most likely at the weekend.
Why do we walk into the supermarket and start wandering around and 90% of the time we have our shopping list on a mind, a piece of paper or on our cellphone? Is it our subconscious mind who drives us from aisle to other looking around whats there! Despite that, you or I have walked through the same aisles hundred times before.
This adds to the shopping experience a waste of time besides the busy cash registries and lineups for those who want just to get their items and leave rather than being caught up.
Have you ever walked into a grocery store and you find out that the product you want is sold out or this store doesn’t carry it.
The problems that arise from grocery shopping experience are:
- consuming time more than it should
- lineups and busy cash registries that result in a bad experience
- cant find out if the store run of a product or carries it before even thinking to go to the store
Observation and empathy
When doing my grocery shopping standing in line, I do observe how people are annoyed and how their body language reacts especially when there is someone in front of them with a big shopping.
People look for cashiers with fewer people and fewer items to check out their shopping as fast as possible. It gets frustrating when the person in front of you slow down the check out process.
I have been empathizing and experiencing this myself it gets annoying with lineups and time to spend in shopping.
Opportunity
Improving the grocery shopping experience and creating an opportunity is a call for designing a market growth.
With the use of technology and design methodologies, I see a place for building a product that would enhance the shopping experience with three core features that serves and accommodates with different customers.
Solution
Design three core features:
- Online grocery shopping from any of your favourite store and have it deliver it your home
- Online grocery shopping from any of your favourite store and do pick up from store
- Shop in-store scan items and pay with your phone
The Design Process:
Brainstorming
Research
I have conducted an online survey from different users. The survey insights:
Personas are categorized by the following criteria;
- Age range 21–50
- Shoppers are singles or couples
- Weekly grocery shopping obtained over the weekend or weekdays
- Size of shopping between 2–4 bags
- Commute by car or walking within 10 minutes
- Time spend between 30 — 90 minutes
Good things about shopping:
- Exploring new products
- Getting fresh produce
- Going home and finding the food you have got for the week
- Exercise
Bad things about shopping:
- Lines at the cashier
- Finding the products around the store
- Waste of time and can’t find what needed in the store
- Too busy on the weekend and not all stores carry the same product or run out
- When the store doesn’t carry the needed product, I have to drive/walk somewhere else
Designing Baggie
The first version of baggie before usability testing:
After testing the first designed product with users, I find out that users click on the pictures if they wanted to shop for vegetables rather than clicking on the aisle name above each section.
After five usability testing I have redesigned the selection items for each aisle name as the following:
This way user could click on the categorized aisle and look for her/his needed produce.
The first screen is where nearby grocery stores appear to the user and also could search the favourite store.
Users could enter any online grocery store to search and shop for their products where they have three main features that enhance their experience as the below-designed screens.
The first screen is for those who want to shop in-store and could use a phone to scan and pay.
While shopping online after having the bag filled the user end up with either having the bag delivered or pick up in store with customized timing and date.
Users could follow their purchased grocery status as designed below:
Conclusion
With fast-paced lifestyle, people will always like to skip lineups after a long day at work or spend less time as possible doing their grocery shopping whether during the week or at the end of the week.
It is in the genes that we don’t bear waiting no one likes to be waiting especially grocery shopping at least the majority of us. it does have no fun in doing so
I have interwind design and technology that offer better experience and value.
The value propositions are:
- Saving time and effort — efficient
- Search and find wanted products
- Skipping the line
Those values do fit a customer segment that has pain and seeking desired gains.
