Duration
March 2021 -April 2021
Work Type
Case Study
Tools
Miro, Sketch, Ai, Axure
Role
UX Research + Product Design
MU Supermarket brings the digital touch points, reduced friction, services and engagement omni channel customers expect, to a retail supermarket experience. MU is a living breathing historic and predictive LTV and CLV.
The Problem
In an increasingly digital world the in-store supermarket experience is adversely analogue and out of step with customers’ new and emerging mental models of service design.
My Role
As a team of one I did the UX and UI design. I used the GV sprint format as a loose roadmap lengthening the duration to 1 month.
Process
PMF/secondary user research, competitive analysis, users & context (interviews), ideation, observational interviews, redesign, prototype, test, usability report.
Constraints
The solution had to be actionable for the average supermarket so a first principles approach like Amazon Go was not a viable solution.
My first solution centered around a customer facing app. After more research and a field study with supermarket employees the second solution (right) more cogently addresses a lack of ownership over the in-store customer journey.
The second screen shows a customer's brand-journey over time (4) and particularly painful experiences (5). Customer care and service touch points should be anticipitory not reactionary.
In the first screen a global overview of the store allows an employee to anticipate heavy foot traffic (1), longer wait times (2), low or out of stock items (3) and respond proactively.
The questions I kept ‘up on the wall’ as I worked through the research phase were: "why does the problem exist?", "why is the problem importan?t", and "who are the in-store customers?".
Since their inception in the 1930’s the risk averse supermarket industry has shirked innovation in favor of incremental gains in efficiency. With margins of 1-3% supermarkets bake friction into the process using cognitive and behavioral psychology and big data to drive up consumer spending.
Frictionless digital transactions are creating new consumer habits, expectations and historically low switching costs: a recent study by Deloitte showed that for the first time convenience (delivery/pickup) and experience (service) were ranked above value and price. Supermarkets must drive larger basket sizes, total household capture and LTV to survive, without relying on the cognitive dark patterns of old.
Conventional customers account for 60% of in store traffic, have a lower income, rural, older while contemporary customers account for 40% of in store traffic, have a higher income, younger and urban. They respond almost identically to stockouts, waiting in lines, time management, the number of times they frequent the store, the importance of convenience and experience over, value and price, and the perception that groceries are a necessity.
I looked to fail quickly by examining the unsuccessful solutions places like Walmart, Sam’s Club and Stop & Shop had tried and failed to implement.
Scan and Go as either a physical device or an app the customer downloaded failed to deliver at all three retailers on multiple attempts over 5 years. Self checkout until late 2018 was slated for the same fate until Covid necessitated its implementation and near universal adoption.
I sent out 60 survey’s and chose 8 people: 6 woman and 2 men aged 22-80. The survey asked people about their buying habits, brand loyalty (if any), shopping process, preferred channels and anecdotes of a recent positive experience and recent negative experience.
Interview questions, responses, notes were organized sequentially top to bottom and clustered around each respondent.
Interview responses were grouped and 5 clusters emerged.
User interviews confirm secondary research. The greatest pain point in this segment of the journey is not overall trip time but disruptions to the trip (ie. out of stock items or missing items, product substitutions, unhelpful employees).
Persona's were a distillation of those interviewed. Evelyn and Anne represent opposite ends of the spectrum.
A young, ‘plugged in’ entrepreneur whose twin focus are family and business. Time is paramount for her--the more time she has the more time she can spend with her kids and on her growing business.
Retired, time is less important but shopping is a chore--health sits front and center in her world; she’s hyper organized and is especially sensitive to touchpoints that don’t provide her any perceived value (ie. coupons, notifications etc).
The problem/painpoint I kept coming back to (mitigating disruptions to the user journey/experience) pointed me toward solutions I had learned through competitive analysis were likely to fail--increasing autonomy. What I realized after conducting interviews is that ‘lost’ is what success looks like when supermarkets effectively implement the cognitive psychology (dark patterns) I mentioned before.
I followed 3 employee’s around for about 25 minutes each during different parts of their day. I focused on members of the ‘floor team’, the people responsible for stocking shelves and assisting customers.
There’s a certain amount of embarrassment on the part of customers who anticipate that they’re (a) bothering the employee; (b) the employee doesn’t know the answer anyway; (c) self-conscious about asking a stupid question; (d) asking people in the checkout line if they found everything okay is terrible design (what do you do if they say: “no, I couldn’t find XYZ”)--the question seems rhetorical and disingenuous.
(a) The paradox of service--helping customers while trying to stock shelves; (b) the greatest painpoint was a cashier shift; (c) the emotional toll of only getting to engage with customers during moments of high friction.
Mapping the interactions between Customer and Employee was the impetus for the global view concept that would emerge in later designs and the chat functionality ubiquitous in online shopping experiences. With a better understanding of how supermarkets function I was able to pinpoint opportunities for engagement.
How might we make finding general help, items, and replacements etc less disruptive to the customers’ journey?
If we augment employees’ ability to speak and assist customers in person by locating products, substitutions and replacements, then customers will feel more in control and employees will feel valued and the journey less friction.
If we augment employee’s ability to speak, interact and assist customers remotely by locating products, substitutions and replacements, then customers will feel more in control and employees more valued.
Screen one is a sketch of the 'Global View' of the employee facing app.
Screen two: On the right is a high fidelity version of the “global perspective”. This allows an employee to (1) see a heat map of the entire supermarket floor. Below that (2) are filters for: trending items, sale items and other 'customer focused employees'. Empty slots (3) are for customers the employee is currently engaged with (in person or remotely). A calendar (4) controls what the employee sees in (5) where the default setting is “LIVE”. (5) Lets the employee know: total number of people in the store, avg trip time and wait time in line. The graph (5) lets the employee anticipate the day ahead; left of center is the past, within the circle is present, right of center is projected traffic for the day. Popular items that are out of stock or low are listed here (6).
Screen one is a sketch of the employee facing customer journey view.
Screen 2: After clicking on a users icon the employee is able to see a customer's lifetime customer journey (LTCJ) to the right of the message window. (1) is Maria’s avg wait time, basket size in $ and her avg journey time. Below each of these figures is a percentage change over the previous year. Next is a chart (2) detailing the customers omnichannel behavior. The key (3) explains important moments being tracked on the graph below (4). Here we compare Maria's omnichannel spend (dark blue) against the avg. customers spend (light blue) for the same time frame. The white line represents her happiness/pain journey. She left 2 negative reviews (6) a few months ago that adversely affected her spend with the grocery store. Her journey is trending upwards now as is her spending. The employee at a quick glance now knows the state of the customers emotional relationship to the brand and can engage accordingly.
The portion of the customer facing app I chose to showcase focused entirely on communication.
Similarly, the employee facing flow jettisoned augmented reality features in favor of tools that could be utilized face to face. In future iterations helping customers remotely will be imperative but for proof of concept they seemed unnecessary.
Why Lemonade
A lemonade stand prototype and test allows me to validate my hypothesis in the simplest way with the fewest variables. This was as much about the app as it was about service design.
What Needs To be True?
That proactive engagement between employee's and customer's creates positive outcomes for both and a stronger brand/customer relationship.
Process
Customers were given shopping lists with dietary restrictions and it was up to the employee to help customers find items and recommend substitutions. More details HERE.
Constraints
Westport Superior Seafood volunteered their small supermarket space which meant I had to do it before or after they closed and get it all done in 2, 30-45 minute sprints.
Screen one: Camaraderie, teamwork and friendship are a huge part of why people show up to work. Being seen is important and this message conveys that.
Screen three: Allowed employee's to search by item, category, and dietary restriction. The checkbox filters were a huge help in allowing employees to stay engaged with customers while looking up the exact product they wanted.
Screen two: employee's were met with a typical e-commerce supermarket experience.
Watching customers scan into the app should be cut out. Most people don’t walk around with their phone in hand. For the purposes of this prototype format it’s really about employee to user engagement.
The scope of the test should be expanded--customers should be given longer shopping lists with specific aversions. The interactions in this first round were too quick--they should be longer and feel more realistic.
Kroger’s is the only supermarket chain with developer resources and an open API that allows access to their entire SKU by store location, product details and the ability to locate those products, precisely on shelves in a nested array (aisle, bay, shelf). After looking at the documentation a feature set would be built based on our HMW/opportunities and a lemonade stand prototype set up in Kroger’s closest store (Richmond, Virginia).
Interactions went more smoothly this time around. Getting rid of the customer facing app was a plus for now. Introducing filters for aversions added another layer of realism and having customer employee pairs search for all the items on the list felt closer to a real use case.
Feedback from ‘customers’ was really positive. They were able to find the products they needed consistently and with a high degree of confidence that they got the best option available. Two of the three customers said, without being prompted, that they would ‘absolutely want this at their local grocery store’.
