Giant Eagle Design Exercise

Face to Face Interview

I interviewed 6 Giant Eagle customers at Squirrel Hill Giant Eagle and Market District. Their age range covers from 20' to 70'. 2 of the interviewees are male, and the rest of them are female. The people I interviewed are all frequent Giant Eagle customers.

Insights:

1. None of the customers I interviewed has used the Giant Eagle mobile app.
2. 3 out of 5 customers create a shopping list before going to the grocery store.
3. Only one customer I interviewed has the habit of clipping coupons, and she only does it occasionally.
4. The customers are attracted by sales items when they see them, but they don’t look for sales information on purpose via the Giant Eagle website or mobile app.
5. None of the customers I interviewed has ever purchased gas from Giant Eagle.

Secondary Research

From reading the reviews in the iTunes Store, I collected the following major feedbacks:

1. Want to be able to make a shopping list.
2. Finding the slider of the Fuel Perks useless.
3. Want to see weekly ads.
4. Want to be able to search for a particular product in a specific store.
5. The “Advantage Card” is difficult to be found.
6. Want to have Apple Pay connected to the app.

Competitive Analysis

Comparing the features and function of Giant Eagle app to the other grocery store apps in the market, I will consider design the app around the Weekly Sale, Shopping List, Store Locator, and Membership Code Scan functions. The current Curbside Express function may be considered as a kind of Online Order service. This service requires more resource to develop if Giant Eagle wants to go in this direction later, then the Online Order system should be the core function of the app.

Competitive analysis of the grocery store apps in the market (Red are must have functions and green are nice to have functions)

Heuristic Evaluation and Usability Test

1. Visibility of system status: The app is difficult to navigate. It doesn’t always inform the user where they are in the system.
2. Consistency: The visual presentation of the app is lack of consistency in terms of color, style and typography.

Color and typography inconsistency of the iOS app

Redesign

iOS app redesign ideas:

1. Generally, I would let the user see information sooner than the current design.
2. I would allow the users to see the homepage and use some of the functions without having to log in to their account.
3. I would use the homepage for sales information to attract the customer at first glance and only use the toolbar at the bottom to navigate the users through functions.
4. I would design the app around the Shopping List function. Users would be able to add the items with the clipped coupons, the sales items, and their purchased items to their shopping list quickly.
5. I would remove the wallet from the homepage and put the barcode of the “Advantage Card” at the top of the Profile tab to allow an easy scan at the checkout.
6. Regarding the UI design, the first thing I will do is to set a primary color and use that color as the accent color of the logo and all the pages. The I’ll align the font and build a hierarchy with font sizes.

Website redesign ideas:

1. The same color and typography consistency issue also exists on the website.
2. The tab on the upper left disappears when clicked into “Market Place” and “GetGo” which give the user no obvious exit to the previous “Giant Eagle” page.
3. The two action buttons on the same page cause hesitation and force the customer to think more. I consider the action button of “Curbside Express” way more important than the “Gift Card Offers”.
4. I would use a visual sign to tell the user to scroll down the page rather than saying “Keep Exploring on the page”. For example, I could show the edge of the pictures in the lower session.

Redesign the website

Cross-platform redesign ideas:

1. I noticed there is another Giant Eagle mobile app called Giant Eagle Classic. If I were redesigning both of the platforms, I would indicate the customer clearly about which one is the most updated app that we recommend them to download.
2. I will consider separating “Pharmacy”, “GetGo” and “Fuelperks” from the current iOS app, because the target customers are related but different groups of people.
3. I will consider customizing the mobile app for Android by following the guide of material design. I would take advantage of using a Hamburger Menu over a Toolbar on Android. Currently, the Android app looks the same as the iOS app.