NavEagle

The Problem
Grocery shopping got significantly harder during the COVID-19 pandemic. Suddenly, there was so much more to think about every time you go to the store: pay attention to your surroundings, make sure you’re going the right way down aisles, stay 6 feet away from other shoppers, do not touch too many things, and do not touch your face. Additionally, shoppers are trying to be as quick as possible to reduce exposure while still getting enough items to reduce trips to the store.

The Solution
All of these factors combined with the overall stress caused by living in a pandemic have made the essential trip to the grocery store a task to be dreaded. Our solution is safe, easy and efficient. It alleviates stress and anxiety for our customers during a pandemic while also enhancing the grocery shopping experience in a post-pandemic world.

Using human-centered design techniques, we created a multimodal application (mobile, tablet, and wearable options) to efficiently route users through their grocery store based on their grocery list, while taking into account the number of people crowding each aisle in order to increase comfort and safety.

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Summary

User interviews
To understand the problems facing grocery shoppers during the pandemic, we began by conducting directed storytelling interviews and contextual inquiries via Zoom and FaceTime with a range of participants. We asked participants to either walk us through a recent trip to the grocery store and describe in detail their actions and emotions (directed storytelling). In some cases, users took us with them on their grocery trip on their phone as observed and asked probing questions (contextual inquiry). Overall, our goal was to collect user data and see what insights emerged naturally before ideating solutions.

customer journey map
‍For each interview, we created a quick customer journey map that outlined that participant's experience. We then used affinity mapping to combine all of the journey maps into one that described the average journey of our participants.

Understanding the User

‍Insights based on user research
1. The biggest pain users were experiencing was stress from in-store crowdedness as during the pandemic they want to limit human interaction as much as possible.
2. Users are highly influenced by physical store layouts and use their knowledge of the store to get their items, but with new and confusing aisle markings and crowdedness their usual routes are disrupted, leading to stress.
3. Users have the main goal to shop as fast as possible especially during the pandemic.

Insights

solution goal
‍‍Based on our insights from user research, we wanted to build a solution that would help users achieve their main goal of shopping as fast as possible, given the added obstacles and stress caused by the pandemic. Given that crowdedness and disrupted routes were the biggest pain points while shopping, we decided to build a store navigation app that would avoid crowdedness and alleviate cognitive load around figuring out the best route.

Lo-Fi Prototype
‍‍While we aimed to make this solution multi-modal, we realized it would be best to start with the most commonly used form to work out the user flows, so we began by designing for mobile. The image below shows our first wireframe of the user flow, including an alert when there are too many people in an aisle and subsequent re-routing.

Designing the Solution

Mid-Fi Prototype
‍After conducting think-aloud testing with the lo-fi prototype, we iterated to clarify the user flow by reorganizing it to follow users' natural tendencies and providing more transparency.

Rather than creating a grocery list first, the user would pick a store location, allowing them to ensure that their selected items would be in stock.

We added an overview screen in order to give the user a general sense of what their shopping trip would look like.

Additional information regarding number of people provides transparency to the user, allowing them to make the decision about whether to enter an aisle.

High-Fi Prototype
‍After conducting another round of think-aloud testing with the mid-fi prototype, we iterated again to more closely align with the users' experience and needs while shopping.

We changed how the route is represented while in active navigation. Users wanted feedforward afforded by showing the rest of the route. Now, they can easily see what is happening and what is about to happen.

Users felt it would feel more natural to just pinch to zoom in and out on the map rather than click a button to see an overview. Based on this, we redesigned the overview option to be a zoom in and out feature.

We identified the mobile application to be something that users would most likely use at home to plan for their grocery shops. We needed to design something that could act as an in-store complement. Our team found that shoppers didn’t like touching their mobile phones inside the store and opted for paper shopping lists when doing bigger shopping trips. We eventually narrowed down our device choices to the tablet and wearable watch. Both would allow for a hands free shopping experience.

Tablet
We envisioned the tablet to be attached to the carts inside of the stores, where users could directly connect their accounts to retrieve grocery lists and optimized routes. The user interface itself changes very little across devices. This allows for users to experience a seamless transition from mobile to tablet or vice versa.

The larger screen made it possible show the entire navigation route on one screen without the need to zoom in and out. This limits the amount of time users have to touch the screen which adds to hands-free shopping experience.

Multi-Modal Design

We assumed that users who use carts will most likely be purchasing more items than users who do not. We changed the layout of the screen so that the list shows on the side of the screen rather than the bottom, allowing additional space to see more items at a time.

The larger screen made it possible show the entire navigation route on one screen without the need to zoom in and out. This limits the amount of time users have to touch the screen which adds to hands-free shopping experience.

Wearable
To to help alleviate the cognitive load and stay hands-free while grocery shopping, we created a wearable that automatically routes you through the store based on your list. Using a visual map display and haptic feedback, the wearable will guide the user through the store, removing the responsibility of remembering a list or a route.

The watch has the simplest interface, reduced just to navigation to the next item. This way, the user doesn't have to hold their phone or touch a public surface (like the tablet). It has the same features, just simplified for the use case.

Through the process of creating a responsive and integrated service, we learned the importance of considering context when designing any product.

Given that we had to make different responsive screens we had to think more about the difference in where a user would be and what their motivations would be given what device they are using.

In addition, we were pushed to think about not just the ideal context in which these devices would be used, but also the edge cases. The entire design process required us to think about context in a deeper way that we hadn’t had to consider before. Thinking about context and motivation when designing any product is vital.

Reflection

NavEagleMultimodal solution for a pleasant and efficient in-store grocery shopping experience (during a global pandemic)

**NavEagle*Multimodal solution for a pleasant and efficient in-store grocery shopping experience (during a global pandemic)***