Shop-a-holic
A guide to a grocery shopper
Problem Statement
A grocery shopper feels frustrated about their shopping experience because the shopper forgets items that were required and also over buys some other items to end up getting more items than needed.
Solution hypothesis
We believe that if we design an app which incorporates maintaining grocery lists in a simple way for the user to make notes without much effort.
The app should be able to send out reminders on set day to make sure the lists are up-to-date before the shopping day.
Competitors
An overview of other apps in the market, their description and points of competition
Bring
Easily shareable shopping app which is visually simplistic and efficient to use
Extremely efficient and visually effective design
Collaborative - can be easily shared with friends and family
Organized to groups of identifiable lists
Device independence - works on a variety of technology including Apple, Google Assistant and Alexa
Amazon Whole Foods App
Grocery Pick-up/Delivery services
We can re-use old shopping lists to re-order so that items are not forgotten
Amazon incentives and discounts!
Recommendations and suggestions based on past purchases
Free Delivery and Pick-up (time saving)
AnyList
List app to add grocery listing by store. Recipes can be imported from any site and added to user lists
AnyList is a big competitor to Bring because of its features to add items off any recipe - even outside of the app from any website.
Affinity Maps
Let's chat with users and find out what happens before they go grocery shopping. How do they know they need to run to the store? What is their trigger point? How do they prefer to shop? Do they like to shop in bulk or go on frequent small trips?
I loved this stage of interviews which brought me more closer to users and closer to finding the biggest obstacles they faced.
The user wants to "Create a Simple Shopping List"
because "they run out of items"
because "they want to cook meals and need snacks"
because "they can only go to the store on select days of the week"
because "it is less stressful with kids to go fewer times and get the most out of their shopping experience"
because "the time, effort and money can be budgeted towards other channels like visiting places and saving for the future!"
User Motivation
The 5 Whys - let us get to the bottom of this!
My distilled findings were...
What are people trying to do? What are their goals?
Minimize wastage of perishable goods
Trying to better organize their storage
Minimize overbuying
Try to find creative ways to use extra or large produce
What is motivating them?
Throwing away produce/perishable goods every week!
Feeling guilty about wastage when there are consumers who cannot afford to buy
Trying to eat healthy, home-cooked meals
What were your key takeaways?
Most users had perishables like fresh produce which were being wasted as opposed to dry pantry items
Most users do not maintain lists on any apps - it is still the traditional pen + paper methods
Trying to convince users who do not use any apps to create lists that this app would organize their shopping experience and save them costs, time and lessen wastage would be a challenge
Mary Mendoza
User Persona
I love being outdoors and don’t want to spend too much time grocery shopping!
Bio & Demographics
Mary is a young mother who works part time in an IT role to handle work and kids with her husband Sam in a more balanced way.
Mary cooks a lot of ethnic food and wants her kids growing up in America to have diverse and healthy food experiences as she did growing up in Spain.
Background & Skills
Mary is a tech geek who has the latest and greatest as far as technology goes - she is very comfortable.
Mary loves to cook and always makes sure everyone has a healthy home cooked meal on most days of the week.
Behaviors, Needs & Motivations
Mary loves to shop and gets excited to try out new items from the store. She always buys something she may or may not end up consuming.
Mary always forgets to make a list.
Her motivation to get an app to manage this process is aligned with trying to avoid going more than once a week with the kids - she does not have a pleasant experience and would rather use that time outdoors!
Pain & Pleasure Points
Needs to get list ready to not forget items/overbuy
Inability/Great difficulty to go to the store during weekdays
Prefers in-person shopping
Has to maximize usage of existing items and minimize waste
Habit Story or Scenario
Mary realizes that it’s Friday night - she has had a long day with work, soccer practices and needs to quickly check the fridge and pantry for items needed before she goes shopping over the weekend. She makes notes using a pen and paper to add things to a list. She also starts to look for recipes they might make next week. She typically has the list memorized so she does not take it with her to shop or if she does take it, she mostly ends up buying outside of the list. Carrying a list while managing young kids is very hard.
MVP Core Features
List Feaure
Make a grocery list - create a functionality like “Notes” on iOS with small additions like checkboxes to add and delete items
Reminders
Send out reminder to complete the list, review or add items
Meal Plans
This is a nice to have feature for those users who love to meal plan but not for the Target User we have
Scenario & Storyboard
Mary and her family are a typical busy family with lot of outdoor sport events to handle, going outdoors to keep themselves and the kids active and are constantly on a time crunch.
However, they love to eat home cooked meals because they are healthier, cost saving and also time saving! Typically on a Friday night, Mary runs through her fridge, pantry items to look for which items are needed for the week and she makes a list.
A day of the weekend is reserved for this purpose - it is an exhausting process with kids and she would rather not go more than once because it is stressful.
She would love to use the time to take kids to other activities and be outdoors.
The Paper Prototype
A basic framework was made using pen and paper method to capture and understand user interactions and pain points. This helped understand what features were intuitive to the users, whether it was effortless to use and the features that may have been missed altogether. The paper prototype laid the foundation to next steps in the user experience journey.
Let's talk user flows...
This is the most critical step for understanding how the app would function and observing the user experience using the paper prototype and interviews. The user flow as shown would carve the way to creation of lo-fi prototypes after a bit more of analysis with the competitive apps in market.
Comparators
Let's talk about unique features our competitors have to offer...
Here we take a look at the features that AnyList and Bring offer as unique user experiences. Each of them work well for a different set of user groups. The user group who loves meal preps would be more inclined to use an app like 'AnyList'. The user groups who tend to forget items on a regular basis would love a more visual app like 'Bring'.
AnyList
Provides for list options
Sorts by Produce/Dairy and so on and suggests options to add to list as you start typing it
Bring
Already has pre-made categories
Visually excellent representation - cannot forget once you see an image
And a more descriptive comparison between AnyList vs Bring lead to...
Basic approach
(AnyList) Add grocery list in the form of categories
(Bring) Pre-defined categories for adding to grocery list with search features
What’s unique?
(AnyList) Order by shopping categories
(Bring) Visual representation of items
What's typical?
(AnyList) Similarity with online shopping experience
(Bring) Tries to mock visual shopping experience for not missing out on items
What works well?
(AnyList) Categorical sorting and accumulation of items for meal plans
(Bring) This app is exactly to the point of trying to make shopping experience non-tedious with an interesting way of listing
What could be improved?
(AnyList) Design is not extremely user friendly and too much going on within the screens
(Bring) Once items are added to the list, there is no ordering or sorting by any category
Takeaway
(AnyList) Excellent features but can be made more user friendly
(Bring) Can be best used for list purposes and sharing the shopping list