Who even is shopping in store these days?
After thorough brainstorming and multiple rounds of iteration to enhance the shopping experience, I realized we were too close to the problem and narrowed down too quick. We decided to take a step back for a fresh perspective.
After conducting initial research, one question stood out: who is spending the most time shopping in 2021 and is projected to continue doing so in the next 5-10 years?
Today, the most frequent shoppers in supermarkets are not the normal people with a 9 to 5 job but instead are people who shop for others.
We discovered the newest kind of shopper which has increased in number by 85%[6] over the last year – the personal shopper.
Understanding Our User
To further understand this new business model, we decided to speak to such representatives in grocery stores, and learn more about their journeys as Personal Shoppers, their goals and their pain points.
Through the inquiry, we learnt:
“Personal shoppers” are designated job positions and their sole job is order fulfillment.
Big retail chains use handheld devices to help personal shoppers locate items with precision, reducing the time spent searching for items.
Personal shoppers are shown the items to be bagged in an order that maximizes their efficiency by navigating through the store layout in a way that minimizes order fulfillment time. For example, grouping multiple orders together to avoid unnecessary backtracking.
Personal shoppers prioritize selecting items from the inventory at the back of the store instead of picking them off the shelves, and use special carts with sections to fulfill multiple orders at once, increasing efficiency.
How Might We Help Them Meet Their Goals?
Using our takeaways from the contextual inquiry with the personal shoppers, we went over our journey map for the customer and mapped it for the Personal Shopper instead.
We identified this user’s goals and problems throughout the journey. We chose these touch points as they had most potential to design for based on the design goals of efficiency, accuracy and convenience.
Existing Painpoints
Based on the journey map, we identified opportunities for design solutions.
Currently the staff members heavily rely on the handheld device for checking an item’s location which causes them to take more time to fulfill multiple orders and hence affects their efficiency. Efficiency
Orders get mixed up in case of multiple orders and also the staff takes some time to check and scan the correct item from the aisle using the label code which is not legible.
The cart and the device have to be handled at the same time.
Carts Of Opportunities
We chose these touchpoints as they had most potential to design for based on the design goals, as identified in the previous section- efficiency, accuracy and convenience.
Looking for items
Here we can help them navigate throughout the store in a more efficient manner such that they cover the least amount of distance in the shortest possible amount of time. This benefits both the personal shopper who has to push a cart through the entire lengths of large sized supermarkets and the retail company whose goal is to fulfill the most number of orders possible.
Segregating items Multi-Order Fulfillment
Oftentimes, these shoppers need to fulfill multiple orders at once. This would require them to keep in mind which item belongs to which particular order and sort these items accordingly.
Checking the mobile device
The user has to operate a handheld device which is generally bulkier than mobile phones. It involves a set of steps to perform this task of looking at the items on the device in a store environment while being under pressure due to time and accuracy constraints.
Navigate in crowd
Help the personal shoppers navigate better when certain sections of the store are crowded to avoid these crowds and save up on time.
Final Solution
Having brainstormed several ideas, we arrived at Mixed Reality as a possible intervention.
With technological innovations disrupting and changing the in-store shopping experience, we wanted to design for a speculative concept where through technological intervention our users achieve their goals.
Cursory research
For reference, we looked at the latest technological advancements in in-store augmented reality shopping experiences.
Wearable vs Handheld: Which will be better?
Using Smart Glasses is convenient as the wearer never has to resort to a physical device because everything is there in front of their eyes (no more chunky hand-held devices while pushing a cart!). They can provide real-time feedback to ensure right picks are made, as well as inventory counts can be made on the fly during picking.
We explored how the store employees and staff members can possibly use MR glasses, such as Google Glass, which is a “wearable, voice- and motion-controlled Android device that resembles a pair of eyeglasses and displays information directly in the user's field of vision”. They offer an experience by using “visual, audio and location-based inputs to provide relevant information”.
Users can use the glasses when they play the role of a personal shopper for their customers. From our user journey stages in User Actions and the possible uses of AR glasses in this journey, we identified potential interventions:
- Usage for navigation
- Maximizing efficiency in crowd
- Map, directions and pin locations
- Item details (product, brand)
Scenario: User has the AR glasses on & is looking for the next item to be picked. They are being directed by the arrows and signifiers that lead to the item kept on the shelf
Scenario: User has the AR glasses on and is picking up two different items for two different orders
The idea is that the glasses would incorporate the following:
- Using on-floor signifiers to direct the user
- User is presented with the best route to navigate among the crowd to avoid it and increase efficiency
- Identification of the item which has to be picked up
- Mapping of item to the order number in case of multiple orders
Evaluation
Since this was speculative design and the target user group was hard to get access to, we tested by role-playing at a local grocery store.
I shot a video of the store aisles where the items on from list were located and edited this video to add interactions to simulate our concept.
We had two participants test the concept wherein the video was the view through the glasses.
Based on the feedback, the interactions were easy to follow and did not interfere with their shopping experience.
However, this sample size is too small to determine if this concept would work.
To that end, our team decided to fall back on research.
The paper titled “Investigating Customer Perception of Virtual Promotions Using Mixed Reality Smart Glasses” states
“There was also positive feedback regarding the possibility to use this technology in the future. Most of the customers are very interested in this new technology and can imagine using it when shopping in a retail store. The key is that it enriches their shopping experience, because it lets them save time and that they find the virtual elements very appealing.”
Limitations and Constraints
Proposing such futuristic concepts certainly comes with its own set of limitations. Here are some key ones:
Adoption of AR/MR/VR
AR/MR/VR headsets pose certain ergonomic challenges. They are heavy and can cause headaches.
Some wearers feel nauseous after wearing them for too long. With technological advancement, hopefully, this can be solved.
Age plays a critical role in the adoption
Will the technological adoption of AR/MR/VR headsets by young, tech-savvy employees be fast and easy as compared to older employees? If so, this can introduce friction in adoption by a larger group of people. Plus, training period of employees would be another challenge
Accuracy & Item Placement Challenge
Our solution assumes that the accuracy of the AR technology that will detect items in a grocery store will be high. However, in real life situations if (and when) customers move the items around, potentially placing them in wrong aisles, this technology will be challenged. (RFIDs to the rescue? maybe?)
Latency in real time update
The real time data updating will need to be precise and timely such that the next item should be displayed only after the current item has been picked by the user. The technology has to sense when the user has picked up an item with extreme accuracy.
Reflection
This was one of the most fun projects I worked on during my grad program.
Exploring emerging tech and thinking about the future are some of my favorite spaces to design for and think about.
Plus, going to the grocery store and talking to customers and store employees as well as creating make shift prototypes of concepts was so much fun and a great learning experience.
This project taught me how important it is to pivot and how much I enjoy thinking outside the box!
