Team

Softwares

Skills

Duration + Location

Google UI Design Kit

Figma

Photoshop

Miro

Invision

User Interface

User Research

Interviewing

Storyboarding

Wireframing

Prototyping

Rebecca Hsiao (Product)

Evan Lam (UX)

Hanley Yu (UX)

Marissa Valenzuela (UI)

10 weeks

ZOOM

OVERVIEW

2020 is not cancelled

ShopCheck is an easy-to-navigate app designed to help everyday shoppers find grocery stores nearby and see their fullness in order to avoid big crowds. During this pandemic, grocery stores are experiencing bottlenecks due to the inability to carry out strict safety regulations without having their business affected. To solve both business & safety issues, I introduce ShopCheck. With a built-in check-in system and data transparency, stakeholders—customers and frontline food workers— are safely in check.

What are Essential workers saying?

"

I can wear gloves but I'll be concerned in changing my gloves consistently in order to keep the next customer safe."

— A worker at McDonald's

"

I think everyone that has to work during this crisis — medical, retail, and fast food industry — should get paid more for putting their families at risk. Why is this not something that is going into effect?”

— Ryan from Dunkin' Donuts

CLICK ANYWHERE ON THE SLIDESHOW TO STOP ROTATION

PRIMARY RESEARCH

Our SurVEY GETS ATTENTION on reddit

Target audience: Essential food workers, who are highly exposed to face-to-face interactions with customers
Goal: Creating a first-person perspective and quantifying how safe or unsafe grocery shops are currently

3/5

Link to responses:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1GUlAzoxaJVuc5oAEC_WlFhBHTe8Nz0SrFmCpAJGZAk/edit#gid=1392265810

Affinity Map:

I revisited all of the most common and trendy survey's short-answer responses and grouped them into three categories using Miro.

After creating our survey on Google Forms, we posted it on Reddit and had immediate response. Within the 41 responses, 4 people showed interest to pursue further one-on-one video chat interview.

INTERVIEW

Insightful CONVERsATIONS with 4 workers

After our survey, we received 6 follow-up e-mails from participants that were willing to kindly share their own experiences. We used this opportunity to deeper dive into firsthand descriptions of what life was like for food-service workers during the pandemic. For safety reasons, we scheduled and conducted all of our interviews over Zoom.

We interviewed 4 workers involved in grocery store and food-service work, ranging from students to managers. Our interview method was a Diary Study format, where we asked them to share what their day at work looked like. We made sure not to ask any leading questions, and we gave our interviewees a lot of space to think and respond.

Evan interviews Mark Pemble, a general clerk at Albertsons

3 main struggles that essential workers are facing:

PROBLEM SPACE

HOW MIGHT WE

How might we diminish physical interactions by motivating customers to shop safely and, as a result, protect frontline food service workers in their workplace?

To summarize the primary and secondary findings in a problem statement, we concluded that:

In this pandemic, grocery retail stores are facing a lack of a measurable way to impose safety & sanitation guidelines on customers, which is a risk to not only shoppers but grocery store employees, families, and anyone in close contact.

USER PERSONA

Who could be at risk?

To gain a better understanding of our target users, we chose 2 workers to share their safety needs:

IDEATION

BRAINSTORMING SOLUTIONS

With this problem statement in mind, we set forth brainstorming ideas. We speedy sketched 4 solutions, weighed the pros and cons, portrayed in form of storyboards and matrix.

Informative app on facemasks

People-counter app

Universal contactless payment

Health monitoring

1. An informative interactive educational platform with videos and tutorials

+ Using free resources to learn about different ways to protect themselves and others

+ DIY tutorials are easily to follow and can condition the mind through action

- Users might not be incentivized to learn

- Learning about protection does not equal action

2. An app with a check-in system that also shows the number of people inside a store

+ If customers can see how full the store is less, they can spread out and go shop during different times

+ Employees would control more efficiently the number of people inside, which would decrease the probability of contamination-spread

- Data and privacy concerns

- Limiting the number of people inside a store does not control social distancing

IDEATION

Impact Matrix

After studying the matrix, it became very evident that the people-counter app idea demanded the least amount of effort and the highest impact, while the other ideas already exist in the market and would produce too much competitiveness.

This idea stood out because a people-counter app could help reduce congestion and increase social distancing in a closed space. Shoppers could also know when to avoid peak hours, reducing the risk of shortages at grocery stores.

I created a storyboard to recreate the use of this app in action in the scenario:

COMPETITIVE AUDIT

CROSS-FUNCTIONality

We narrowed down to the following functionalities and analyzed them from 4 successful apps to compare it to ours.

LAYOUT

Sketching & wireframing

Homepage shows a list of grocery stores. The bottom nav bar is fixed and structures our app.

Current capacity of grocery stores in form of a bar graph to increase discoverability

List of grocery stores based on saved preferences. PPE is displayed if available.

Before completely checking in to a grocery store, users can see a list of safety tips to follow.

We spent a lot of time fleshing out how users would navigate our app. This is a quick glance of what the lo-fi prototypes looked like:

Categorizing fixed navigation bar for better accessibility:

The user experience was centered around a bottom navbar with 3 main pages.

Inspired by the simplicity of the Yelp app, this page allows users to view suggested grocery stores and search for specific destinations.

Having a list of saved locations can help users access frequented grocery stores quickly.

Allows users to access their profile, see a list of current or previous check-in’s, adjust various settings, and send feedback to us.

Two-sided benefits with Check-In system:

Checking-in allows customers to skip the line or wait in a priority line when arriving at the grocery store. Simultaneously, employees may see the amount of customers that check-in to better manage the flow of customers to increase safe shopping.

PIVOT

ADDING a Reward system

To encourage users to check-in for their own safety and of others, I suggested a coupon reward system that can be used during check-out.

Customers can check-in to gain “fast-pass” access to the store in addition to receiving a coupon if they choose to check-in at a store that is not busy.

Employees can better maintain safety standards.