This is a study into the user requirements of a smartphone application designed to assist households in Melbourne and Victoria with their physical grocery shops under Stage 4 lockdown restrictions.
Focus Areas
UX Research
Ideation
Wireframing (Adobe XD)
Prototyping (Adobe XD)
Project type
Group school project (part of INFO10003 - individual roles listed below)
Duration
12 weeks (Aug - Nov 2020)
The Context
In 2020, the state of Victoria, Australia underwent lockdown restrictions to curb the spread of the coronavirus - such as not being able to travel further than 5km of our residences, and only able to leave homes once a day for essential reasons, such as buying food and groceries.
As such, EzShop aimed to ease the residents' shopping experience through a variety of means, including notifying users of product availability in stores, allowing users to collate shopping lists, and providing the shortest possible distance between stores. At the same time, users can support smaller specialty grocers.
Melbourne under Stage 4 lockdown
The Outcome
Optimising residents’ time out
Various app features, based on my role in the design process:
Newly created empty shopping list
Product keyword search
A populated shopping list with a product assigned
On route to location
Goals & Roles
An app which aids lockdown woes
The initial project was to create an app which is related to COVID-19. As a group, we discussed on the issues we wanted to address, and decided upon the following goals:
Allow residents to support smaller businesses and grocery stores
Enable Victorian residents to shop for essential goods in a manner which minimises time spent outside and contact and with others
Collate and provide availability of goods in various stores
Provide directions to and around stores
User Observation Methods
Making & analysing a questionnaire
I created a questionnaire to gather opinions and data from residents, gathering information regarding demographics as well as experiences with shopping under restrictions and with using existing shopping apps, with several analysis findings:
Likelihood of forgetting items
Most shoppers plan in advance, and are at times susceptible to forgetting items
% of respondents who shop physically
Most respondents prefer shopping physically to online shopping
Average shopping trip duration
Most spend 30 minutes to 2 hours per trip
Methods from other team members
Personas - Testing ideas for relevance to several users in a lockdown environment
Contextual Inquiry - Interviews and observations with prospective app users
Storyboards - Allowing us to consider target user actions and experiences with empathy
The Ideation
Methods based on observations
With these findings as a base, the team began planning an executing solutions. The methods I took charge of are:
Site Map
Organising interfaces into levels and visually depicting the flows of the app to specific features.
Lo-Fi Wireframes
Translation of ideas into sketches and wireframes. On my part, I focused on shopping lists and adding items to cart.
The Outcome
The final product
Sorting List
Shopping lists can be sorted based on category, store location, alphabetically, or to the users' preference.
List Collaboration
Shopping list which can be shared, viewed and edited by friends and family members, allowing for greater collaboration and notification between the shopper and the other members.
Map Routing
The app generates the shortest possible routes in between stores, and around the stores. At the same time, users can check off their items in the app.
Efforts from other team members
Style Guide - To ensure consistency, one team member came up with a style guide and UI elements, to which we took reference from when creating our parts of the app.
CONCLUSIONS + LESSONS
An intro into UX Design
This project allowed us as a team to touch base on the fundamentals of UX design - diving into common UX methods, and having a go at creating an interface ourselves - in this case an app for a specific purpose. I personally enjoyed this design process, being able to work with group mates remotely, as well as being able to understand problems and interpret them in order to create novel and beautiful solutions.
This however came at several personal challenges, as I was designing an app for a target audience from another country, to address a specific issue which I never experienced before then (I had not experienced such strict lockdown measures myself). As such, this effort required a higher level of user empathy, as I tried to understand the situation of Victorians. In retrospect, this inquiry also led to a greater amount of research and data, and deeper observations and interpretations drawn from such.
I learnt a lot about the process towards creating an app for a seamless and enjoyable user experience, and how to ultimately optimise features for specific uses. I believe this will guide me forward as I strive on in product design.