GroceryUs!

Summary

Problem

"How Might We make the collaborative grocery shopping experience convenient and efficient?"

Core Experience

Research & Core Questions

Methods

Synthesis

Ideation

Learnings

GroceryUs! is a necessary app for anyone living with housemates. It is designed to help users to create shopping lists collaboratively, make the preparation and the trip to the store as simple and convenient as possible. A lot of people choose to move out from their family after they grew up due to different reasons such as distance, affordance, making new friends and meeting more people. However, everyone is raised differently and personalities can often rub up against one another. One of the biggest conflicts that happen between housemates is grocery shopping. The goal of the app is to help housemates to simplify the shopping process and make it no longer a nightmare for them. My solution was to design features where users can collaboratively edit the shopping list they created and complete payment within the app.

This app was designed in the final project of the Human Centered Design class I took at Berkeley. The project was divided into two parts, the research part is a group section and the design part is an individual section. In the group section, I led the research team in gathering key insights, ideation, and conducting user surveys and interviews. I also participated in creating storyboards, journey maps, and user personas.

From 130 survey respondents, 10 interviews and 6 competitive product analyses, we saw that almost everyone with housemates had experienced collaborative grocery shopping and had a bad experience. Therefore, we came up with our problem statement:

The principal factors we addressed were time efficiency, communication and payment system between housemates. In terms of time efficiency and communication, we discovered that college students, especially those doubling as part-time employees, don’t have much time to spend at a grocery store. They are in desperate need to have an app that can help them organize everyone's desired grocery items for one single shopper to make a grocery run. In terms of payment, it is likely that there are different kinds of payment methods for the group. It may be confusing and inconvenient to charge each individual separately. 

I designed an app that can clearly list every housemate's requirements, so time can be saved in finding specific items without the need for repetitive communication. Additionally, the interface provides a convenient and effective way to unify payment charging for the entire group.

Shopping List (Shopper interface)

The shopping list is divided into two interfaces, one for the shopper and another for the orderer. Items added by the orderer will be divided into grocery categories. This interface will be more convenient for the shopper, imitating grocery store categorization for orders. This organization method will make shopping more efficient and time-saving. There is a checkmark to mark already picked-up items and a progress bar to display the proportion of items left to pick up.

Users can also tap the section to enlarge and see the details.

Shopping List (Orderers' interface)

Process

How do we satisfy the needs of all users who are shopping?

• What is the shopping pattern/behaviour of the consumer? 

• What are some pain points in grocery shopping in general? 

• What are the factors that contribute to the inefficiency of collaborative grocery shopping?

• How do we maximize the communication between the housemates?

“HMW make collaborative grocery shopping convenient and efficient for housemates?”

By looking more in-depth at the problem, we realized that many people who grocery shop together usually make a list before shopping and tend to use Venmo as a form of repayment. Grocery shopping also changed once the pandemic began. Even before, people do not like taking too much time at the grocery store. 

Therefore, having a better system like an app to collaborate on shopping lists, and a unified charging function on the same platform can increase the efficiency of communication and grocery shopping collaboration.

Survey - 60 respondents

To better understand our target audience, we conducted a survey with 60 respondents who live with housemates. The findings from our research gave us more insight into users’ thoughts, motivations, and needs that would help guide our design decisions throughout the process. Some of the key insights we discovered were:
”Effective communication is often lacking, leading to overlooked or duplicated items” and "Handling payments among housemates is complicated and time-consuming."

Competitor apps include Cozi Family Organizer, OurGroceries, Mealtime, Venmo, Paypal or Anylist

• Cozi Family Organizer keeps families in sync and on schedule

  • Unable to add or delete items from shopping lists

• Mealtime helps build meal plans and has +200 personalized options such as allergy restrictions and how many people you're feeding 

  • Does not alert low balances and auto-fill your credit card information from your wallet​

• Our Groceries allow multiple people to edit a shopping list at the same time

  • Items do not have a price field for list estimates and do not automatically categorize

• Venmo and Paypal allow people to make personal transactions and transfer back to their bank account

• Anylist helps users to store and organize their recipes

  • Shopping lists do not sync​

• Main features...

  • ​Viewable by all collaborators

  • Categorized by product types

  • Alerts when others purchase some items on list

  • Meal plan-specific features

  • Coupons and discounts

  • Grocery pick-up service ahead of time

  • Building default collection for your commonly bought items

• Some grocery chains like Kroger Own their own mobile apps tailored to their stores

Interviews

I conducted interviews with 12 participants, and here are several key insights I've gathered:

We found that participants want control over their time and efficiency in grocery shopping, but lack of confidence and knowledge to do so. Most of them do not plan what to buy before grocery shopping and they also do not have a tool to unify and organize all the information.

Key Insights

Many insights range from personal preferences to groups.

1. People prefer in-person shopping over online shopping

2. People who do not live alone would normally buy groceries with their housemates or family.

3. People usually take about three hours for grocery shopping

4. Split receipts among groups manually by items

5. People have different payment methods

6. People overspend time and money when they do grocery shopping

7. Most used messages to tell what they want the shopper to buy

8. Shoppers struggle a lot because of the unclear instructions from their housemates

9. People want to save time but they often can't achieve the goal because of inorganization

10. People are intimidated by "collaborative" grocery shopping as they think it will cause a lot of trouble and conflicts

11. Housemates often share groceries or pick up items for each other and pay each other back.

The main insights were helping users to save time, reduce the number of trips to the stores and less stress. The other insights helped us to confirm our hypothesis that people have a lot of struggles in doing collaborative grocery shopping, given their overspending time and money behaviour, and inorganizing in managing their shopping lists and payments.

User Persona

I developed a persona to provide direction for my design choices.

Horrible shopping experience

• Exhausted: Tired, slow and inefficient because collaborative grocery shopping can be a lot of items to purchase and also because of the unclear requirements which caused the shopper to ask back and forth through messages and calls. When you're located in some grocery stores that have bad signals like Costco, you might need to leave the store just to call or text your housemates about their unclear shopping list​

• Incompatible preferences: Different participants may have different preferences for brands, products, and grocery stores, making it challenging to find a solution that works for everyone

• Complex coordination: Coordinating schedules, sharing lists, and dividing responsibilities among multiple people can be difficult and time-consuming

• Inaccurate quantities: If not managed properly, it may lead to inaccurate quantities of items being purchased or duplicate items being bought by different participants

• Communication breakdowns: Effective communication is key to successful collaborative grocery shopping. If there is a breakdown in communication, items may be overlooked, duplicated, or not purchased at all

• Difficulty accommodating special requests: Some participants may have specific dietary restrictions or preferences, making it challenging for the group to accommodate these requests

  • Limited control: Collaborative grocery shopping can limit individual participants' control over the items they purchase. This may result in frustration or dissatisfaction if items are not available or are not to their liking 

• Time-consuming 

  • Registers

  • Over 50k surveys find the checkout line to be the major pain point 

  • Checkout Errors - Scan twice/missing scan

  • Confusing layout - get lost in the store or can’t find the item, items not in order​​
     

• Complicate payment issue​

  • Different payment methods ​

  • Takes a lot of time for the shopper to charge people one by one

Usability Testing

After performing the usability testing with five users, I amended and updated my original design. For starters, I divided the shopping list function into two interfaces: one for the shoppers and one for the orderers. Additionally, I separated the split function as an individual page and made some amendments. Instead of having the amount dragged in the money bars determine the total amount, I switched it around. The new update has users insert the total amount first reduced by dragging the money bars. This can increase efficiency in charging individuals as well as reduce time in calculations.

More usability testing and participants

Due to the time constraint and pandemic issue, I only did one round of usability testing with 3 participants. I think performing another round after the high-fidelity design can help me to understand more about how users interact with the app and if the new changes make sense to them.

Features

While addressing the issue of collaboration, I must also enhance app efficiency and usage. The features must be comprehensive, useful and well-rounded. To alleviate grocery shopping pain points, the app should enable efficient preparation by users. Based on our survey and interviews, many participants often use recipes to help with cooking. To aid this, allowing the direct addition of recipe ingredients to shopping lists could be a useful feature.

Learnings

Teamwork

Reflecting on my first group project during the COVID-19 pandemic, I can confidently say that it was a unique and challenging experience. With the need to work remotely, communication and collaboration were key to our success. Despite the difficulties posed by the pandemic, my team was able to adapt and find effective ways to work together virtually. Through regular virtual meetings and the use of technology, we were able to stay connected and on track with our project goals. This experience taught me the importance of clear communication, adaptability, and the ability to work as a cohesive team, even in the face of adversity. Overall, I am proud of what we accomplished and grateful for the opportunity to learn and grow as a team.