Part I:
The Target Audience
My first attempt at learning about iterative design methodologies through experience began with brainstorming for a specific target audience. I set out to find a customer group that encountered a number of difficulties performing a specific task as part of their daily routine. It was important to me that these customers’ difficulties were not resolved or significantly mitigated through their smartphones. After comparing multiple target audiences, their tasks, and troubles, I concluded my search pronouncing grocery shoppers as my focus.
Observations and Interviews
Interview Candidate #2 declined photo but allowed for a picture of her shopping list which is half in Greek and other half in English
Interview Candidate #2 declined photo but allowed for a picture of her shopping list which is half in Greek and other half in English
My interview candidates were a 35 year-old single mother and a 28 year-old Trader Joes employee both with paper shopping lists in various aisles of a local Berkeley supermarket. Both candidates’ shopping lists were wrinkled, disorganized, stained and torn. I began by greeting the shoppers as they were browsing for items on their list. I introduced myself and asked if I could have a few minutes of their time to ask a couple questions that would hopefully one day contribute to making their shopping experience easier and more seamless. The questions asked were the following:
· Where is your phone?
· Why did you not use your phone as your shopping list?
· What are the characteristics you find most burdensome about shopping?
· How many times do you find yourself visiting an aisle more than once because your shopping list is disorganized?
· How often do you forget to purchase items on your shopping list?
· How do you mark items as purchased on your shopping list?
· What benefit would you receive from having both hands free and being able to look at your shopping list?
· How would your shopping list be organized in a perfect world?
· How would you imagine a shopping list on a 1.5” screen?
· Are you comfortable speaking your shopping items aloud or typing them as a form of input to a smart device?
· How long do you spend price-checking items to see if they can be found cheaper elsewhere?
· Would you be frustrated if I told you a competitor grocery store is having a sale and offering many of your items for a lower price?
· How long do you spend in line at a register?
· How many times have you found yourself at the register and realized you forgot something, having to run back out of line and holding up traffic?
After an in-depth conversation with each individual shopper, to my surprise the thoughts and feedback I gathered about contemporary shopping methodologies nearly mirrored each other’s complaints and praises. Both customers led me to the conclusion that smartphones are simply ineffective and often troublesome as a shopping aid, specifically as a grocery list. The main complaint both interview candidates had about using their smartphone as a shopping list was that it eliminates an entire hand to be used for pushing their cart and placing items into it. Both interviewees said that they were unable to maneuver their shopping cart successfully when holding their phone. Also the candidates stated that having their phone out usually lead to texting and/or answering phone calls prolonging their time spent at the market. The customers did admit to the paper shopping list being flawed as well, one mentioning that it was “only the lesser of the two evils”. Disorganized paper shopping lists often led them to visit an aisle more than once, further extending the shopping experience. Neither interviewee had a writing utensil on them and had no effective way of distinguishing which items they had already put into their cart without resorting to memory. Lastly, both paper grocery lists and smartphone grocery lists are not effective methods of recalling everything one needs from the super market because neither a smartphone nor a paper list and writing utensil are always within reach. In conclusion, the interviewees wanted a grocery list that was always on them and available, one that did not come at the expense of one of their hands, and one that organized their list automatically with a simple way of marking what is being dropped in the cart maximizing efficiency.
Part II:
Brainstorming Ideas
SmartWatch Concepts
1. Market sale application - an application with flash deals, featured price drops on various items throughout a given store; customers must reach the item within a certain time limit and scan it using their watch's camera to get the deal.
2. Grocery store shopping list application - a hands-free shopping assistant that allows you to input your items through voice and organize shopping lists based on aisle numbers and food categories.
3. Anywhere market - an online market delivery application on a smartwatch that lets one swipe through categories and items allowing for anytime/anywhere shopping using delivery from various markets supporting door delivery services.
4. Laser price scanner watch hardware - a price scanner hardware application that allows users to scan an item find the nutritional information and price of the item and whether a competitor market offers the item for a cheaper price.
5. Basket holder watch hardware - a hook hardware to hold shopping bags on your wrist allowing you to use your entire hand and wrist to carry heavy items as opposed to clenching your fingers.
6. Lined post-it note attachment - an old fashioned hardware attachment to a watch that attaches to the back of a watch with a magnetic extendible pen allowing for paper lists to be created whenever and wherever one wants as long as they have their watch on their person.
7. Assistance watch - watch with single remote button for calling for assistance from store employees using geo-location technology.
8. Recipe application - an application that tells one what foods can be made from the ingredients available in their fridge/pantry and gives healthy options and preferences of foods based on voice input.
9. What you need - an application which tells you what ingredients are necessary to make certain featured foods when specifying a budget and preference.
10. Social shopping application - an application allowing one to see other people in the same market, their respective shopping carts along with what they plan on purchasing, and what they are going to make with the ingredients.
11. Open market chartroom - an application allowing customers to ask for a discount on certain items which the manager gets to authorize the discount if a certain number of customers commit to buying it; if the number of people buy the item their credit card is automatically refunded or a credit is added to their buying account for their next purchase.
12. Employee assistor - an application for market employees to mark an item empty when out of stock, alert a manager if more registers need to be opened, and other useful assistive calls without allowing an employee to access the distractions available on a smartphone.
Prototype
The idea I selected to prototype is the grocery store shopping list because of the difficulties the shoppers I interviewed expressed with their experiences of using both smartphones and old fashion paper shopping lists.
This prototype is a shopping cart application that takes in ingredients through voice commands. It organizes the items one speaks into their list by type of food or aisle number relative to the supermarket it locates you in or nearby. It also shows nutritional information about the product and compares the local super market price to competitors within a specified radius. The prototype is also able to show shopping cart totals based on the super market's price with options of adding or removing items and even prospectively predicts register wait times for a rapid checkout experience.
Insight
The insight I gathered from my testing with yet another market shopper using my prototype smartwatch was positive, but skeptical. The interviewee was ecstatic about the idea of being able to have both hands free while shopping, but expressed the concern of being too involved with the device taking focus away from getting in, out, and on with one’s daily errands. Confusion also arose during interacting with the prototype’s nutritional information regarding whether one could scroll for more information and if the small text would be visible to the naked eye with ease. Overall the flow of the application seemed to please the customer with the main change request being to add an option to switch between two separate list screens of items that have already been added to one’s cart and items which have yet to be added. The customer truly appreciated the categorizing of items by aisle number to ensure that no aisle was visited more than once and all aisles without items on the list could be avoided. In conclusion, the customer indicated major interest in the smartwatch application stating it has great potential. The major concern with the application is the watch’s distracting additional features that may possibly lead to a prolonged shopping experience. Another immediate worry is the readability of text given the screen size and one’s ability to touch an exact row on the screen when checking items off the shopping list or scrolling between menus. The means of this experimentation with a smartwatch prototype has lead to significant feedback that will be used for the next version of the application.
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