Overview
Project developed in a week as part of a design challenge for a fictional international supermarket chain. In my view, we don’t ever have to reinvent the wheel, but there are millions of ways to use a wheel. That’s how I approached this project. I got a very specific brief requirement and a market that already has multiple solutions to the problems individually. It was less about creating something new and more about how to use existing solutions better.
Confusing and bloated software that evolved without a clear product vision resulting in rapidly diminishing user engagement across various KPIs.
Context
Neomarket is a fictional international chain that has arrived in Brazil. One of the company’s main pillars is accessibility. There’s also a focus o positive social impact.
Device manager, performance improvement and PC enhancement. Trough Vantage is possible to configure every aspect of the machine, run updates, scans, diagnostics and troubleshooting.
For this design challenge, I was alone. No developer, no design partner, no manager. I had to design in isolation, which goes against one of my design principles. But with control out of my hands, I had to adapt.
Goals
- Drive user engagement
- Kickstart Vantage evolution as part of a longer term vision project
- Get more useful data
Challenges
- Engagement falling fast
- Big software with a lot to tackle
- Multiple high priority requests from multiple stakeholders
Project
This is the first step in a set of investigations and changes to the software. The general goal is to revise a piece of software that became bloated and lost direction.
My contribution
The only person in the project. Being a design challenge there was no possibility for collaboration and multiple factors were down to assumptions.
What it is
Bespoke self-checkout built with accessibility in mind. Physical buttons, an audio option, were two of the main motivator to steer away from the industry standard of touch screen only.
Process
Highly iterative and fast process. Time constraints led to a lot of what was done. Research time was prioritised and was the task with the largest amount of time allocated.
How I worked
Systems thinking was paramount for this project. One of my first steps was to understand the supermarket model, market and trends in the sector. Crossing those pieces of information with innovations around the world gave me an initial view of the system around supermarkets. It was challenging to learn about the business, its clients and technologies in such a short time. So I tried the create a more high-level view of the whole picture.
Research
The research was led by the UX researcher on the team
- Usage data
- User interviews
- User surveys
- Overload of information
- Confusing paths to action
- Can't find what I need
Solution
Introduce more data on the dashboard. Decrease amount effort to get rich information without cognitive overload.
What do I need to know? That was my first question, so naturally one of my first steps was to do market research. I included trends, growth, job creation, main chains, reach, business models, consumers habits. Looked into local and international statistics, how they compared. This way I could get a view of the wider context, how do supermarkets work? What are their margins? What’s the forecast for the sector? There was a lot a didn't know, so I needed to fill in the gaps.
- Many unmoderated sessions
- Few moderated sessions
- All remote with different variations
I looked into de delivery market for groceries specifically. This was due to an early insight that delivery could, or not, have a role in the final solution. Supermarkets own delivery systems vs. third party deliveries. Pay scales and differences, advantages, costs. This could be a way to deliver a positive social impact.
- Generally positive response
- Confirmed preference for data sets
- Overload remained a problem
What about breakpoints?
Vantage is used in a multide of sizes and information couldn't be properly presented in the current format.
What about future scalability?
One of the goals was to set the stage for futher evolution and the current format was to rigid.
By breaking the information into separate cards we could present it in every breakpoint and introduce more flexible elements that could accommodate different set of information in the future.
Key decisions
My reasoning was to simplify and speed the process. Also, given the conditions of the project.
- Short project timeline, 7 days. Cutting any recruiting, actual testing, would cut time.
- Pandemic made it harder to observe users.
- Larger user pool, being to observe shopping in other countries.
- Even with cultural differences, supermarkets have a lot in common.
In some cases, nothing is more accessible than speaking with another human. This way I could also maintain jobs and give an option for clients who might prefer traditional checkouts.
Learnings
In many phases of the process, I felt the need to have a different perspective, counterpoints to mine, new ideas. Not being able to talk to any developer left me resorting to assumptions about implementation feasibility.
Again resorting to assumptions to fill in gaps that couldn't be filled due to the nature of the design challenge. That gave a clearer vision of how much teamwork contributes to better results.
Results
Final designs
An individual jack of all trades. Through the phone app is possible to shop, navigate the store, shop and scan, have audio guidance.
Impact
Different options to fulfil different shopping preferences and needs. A more flexible, efficient and inclusive supermarket that becomes the preferred option due to its high level of service.
Active effort to retain, and create jobs, in other areas of the business to compensate for possible automation losses. Training former cashiers to work in other positions. Increased hiring keeping up with possible growth in deliveries demand.
Next steps
Better and more comprehensive research. Larger focus on the local market.
Live testing solutions were proposed to acquire more data to discover flaws and further necessary improvements.
Is it viable to implement custom hardware as proposed?
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