A conceptual challenge aimed to ease a friction point for someone in their day-to-day. Prompted from our Ga Tech instructor during our first collaborative project, our team chose to take on the issue of diet/meal planning and/or shopping for a particular menu/dietary restriction. Team consisted of: Dr. Asherah Allen, Cathleen Madrona, and myself. Dr. Allen has a background in crafting diets for athletes– hence, she helped provide the direction of the project and the research. Ms. Madrona has a fair amount of expertise in managing projects, so she served to focus our team and set goals. I have a fair amount of curiosity and had been studying computers and coding for close to a decade– therefore, I was charged with centering the team in a concrete vision for implementation. We all collaborated on the various aspects of the design itself. Without further ado, let’s jump into the project where all projects begin: research!

Research:

Interviews:

Asherah, Cathleen, and Myself all interviewed 2 target users per team member– aged 30-35 with a young family– prepared with our interview plan and list of research questions. From this, we constructed an affinity diagram to better review the insights.

Ideation:

User Insights:

Users find that they prefer to spend as little as time in the grocery store as possible. 

Users find it annoying when the grocery store they visit lacks an item they need for a recipe/ meal plan.

Prioritized efficiency and saving money, not organic vs conventional.

After having examined the input from our users, we opted to redefine our problem statement:

(We’re new to this, ok?)

Revised Problem Statement:

People have too few minutes in the day and grocery shopping can be complex and time-consuming; moreover, the users want the ability to provide affordable, healthy food for their families– the families who they would prefer to be spending time with at home.

A bit redundant, but perhaps shows a better empathy with the target user. What do you think?

One of my favorite parts– no wrong answers! (see below)

I like. I wish. What if?

Next, we did a dot voting exercise based on the ideas we came up with.

From here, we discovered what direction our app should take.

Our Value Proposition:

Our app allows users to navigate to the nearest grocery store that has every ingredient on their list– whether it be a meal plan, a weekly shopping list, or a recipe pulled from an app or a website– or informs them what percentage of items they will able to obtain at their preferred grocery store.

We then looked to the competitors to see what was already offered and how frictionless onboarding was to achieve.

Our takeaways from the competitor analysis:

• WhatsInStock is a close competitor; however, android support is spotty and UI is clunky
• Mealime groups commonly purchased ingredients into recipes to try (neat idea but not quite the sorting we’re trying to do)
• GroceryList does suggested categories
• ShoppingList Ease sends a reminder as you enter the grocery store

Prototyping:

Usability Testing Results

How users described this app

1. “Shopping list/ingredients app that you can save, organize and share.”
2. “This replaces the shopping list, replaces texting back and forth. It’s also inspiring to look recipes.”

“Collaborative shopping list that has additional features like store availability.
At the end of the day, it’s a shopping list app.”

“It would be cool if..”

1. I could add my dietary preferences and know exactly what’s in season
2. Add to list from recipe: Select All rather than individual
3. I could order groceries from this app
4. I could share the list via text, not just email
5. Integrate with my favorite recipe apps/websites: ie, Pinterest and Tasty (Buzzfeed) in addition to Yummly
6. I could see specific brands in stock
7. Have local deals include “mom and pop” stores – CSAs, Co-Ops, Farmer’s Market
8. Share my list earlier in the process

Final Thoughts

People hate grocery shopping because it is overwhelming and stressful, but essential.