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HCI Project: Grocery Shopping Bot 2020
HCI Project: Grocery Shopping Bot 2020

This project was done as part of my Human Computer Interaction masters at the university of salzburg, additionally i applied with this project to the competition startup salzburg weekend and we won first place prototype and 2nd place elevator pitch deck. I will link to the pitch deck presentation in the refrences section below. This was an individual project so all the work done below was done by me.

Watch the video prototype 👀

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Step1: User research

We did not have a solid idea on what to do at first. This project was done during the pandemic, when there was a total lockdown in Austria except for going to grocery stores. We noticed that many people did not want to go out even to supermarkets because they live in household with people in risk groups, we focused on the area of Salzburg in Austria, in which the popuplation is distributed among multiple villages distances apart and most households need a car to go to the nearest supermarkets. So, our research question was

How technology could help people in rural and new developed areas to shop for grocerieres during the pandemic?

Becase this market is well saturated, we wanted to focus on areas which apps like Mjam market, lieferndo ot Gurkel reaches, also we wanted to focus on the older generation, the non tech savys who has high purchasing power, they use whatsapp to communicate to their family members who live in different cities and who would text their sons or daughters to bring them something from the supermarket while on the way to home.

Recruitment & interview questions

I recruited participants from my study program colleagues, i asked them to put me in contact with their parents of family members who live in the rural areas of Salzburg.

6 participants took part in the study in total.

Interview Questions

How often do you go to the grocery store?

If more than one time per week? Why do you do this instead of getting the studd for the whole week and restore it in the fridge?

If you do this weekly why is it the case?

Before you go to the supermarket what kind of preperations do you do? (ex: shopping list, search for offers, search for recipies and get igredients accordingly) Follow up: how often do you do that?

Are you loyal to certain brands/local supermarkets or whatever is convenient for you? Followup: What made you loyal to that brand?

what is the thing you wish to be implemented in every supermarket you go to? Followup: Describe your best shopping experience?

To what extent are you satisfied about the packaging of the fresh products you get from the supermarket?

Describe your worst shopping experience?

Did you do any grocery shopping online service before? Follow up: Are you a frequent user? Followup: If not why you stopped using it? Followup: Describe your experience with the online store, what did you like and what frustrated you? Followup: What kind of products do you buy from the grocery shop all the daily needs or just secondary products?

What barriers could be there for online shopping compared to instore shopping?

Results

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Pains

Busy work schedules, and traffic Jams

Grocery stores close at 7pm and can not catch them after work

Saturday is very busy, because it’s usually when the supermarket has weekend offers

Pandemic has changed our perception on safety in congested areas

Online grocery stores delays delivery and not easy to use

Users could not trust the quality of the picks, espicially for fruits and vegetables

people on supermarkets enter without masks

Supermarkets are poorely ventilated

the space is very tight

I am afraid to touch anything in the jars & glasses section because everything is packed

Needs:

I want to shop easily without searching for every product and going through a long list of filters

I miss price transparency

I want shorter delivery time, maximum next day delivery

I want to choose the packaging of the product

I want to be able to call the person who will pick up the food for me

I want to save my previsous items for quick buy without needing to order them again

I dont want to be forced on scheduling orders or be suggested irrelevant products

I want it to be easy and simple, I give you a list of products, and you buy it for me

I want to select subsititutes if a product is already out of stock

I want to select multiple delivery time windows and have direct contact to the picker

Step2: Ideation

I spent 1 day to try to come up with different ideas and evaluate them

Idea 1: Make an app for people living in the same area within 1 km, whoever is going for shopping can announce it on the app, and someone can chat with him to request an order. There shoulf be a maximum weight for the order in case the picker does not have a car, and the picker recieve 5-10 euro delivery fee depending on order size.

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Idea 2: VR tour in the supermarket. This was very hard to implement because of the technological complexity of building VR products on 1 hand and it will be difficult for supermarkets to provide products as 3D opjects for the VR glasses

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Idea3: conversational grocery shopping app, it works like whatsapp, first it asks u to upload a shopping list or scan it, then confirm or adjust the amounts, then it will aggregate the products from different grocery stores, you can choose your favorite one, then choose the delivery time window and pay.

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Step3: UI design and prototype testing

Since idea 3 seemed the most promising business-wise, and matched best the user needs we learned about in the user research we decided to take it to the next level and build a prototype out of it.

Final design:

Start

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Confirm scanned list

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Adjust quantaties

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Manual search when clicking on add another item

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Confirm order

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Select items you would accept substitutes for

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Choose delivery time

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Check recommended products

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Pay

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Feedback & Next steps

When I pitched this product in salzburg startup weekend competition in 2022, I got the feedback from the judge panel that supermarkets would be quite tentative to give me these data, so it is better to focus on 1 supermarket rather than agregatting the data from multiple supermarkets. 2 years later on August 2022, Meta launched this feature on whatsapp which enables Whatsapp users in India to order their groceries from whatsapp.

https://about.fb.com/news/2022/08/shop-on-whatsapp-with-jiomart-in-india/⁠

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This would have been already a prrof of concept for the idea. I had the chance to test the prototype internally with the panel of judges, but I didnt have the chance to test it with the users I have already talked to in the user research phase, which would have been a crucial step to validate if the solution prototype would solve the problems they mentioned and whether they would consider using something like this in the future.

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HCI Project: Grocery Shopping Bot 2020HCI Project: Grocery Shopping Bot 2020