Research Methods
Carolyn Zhou, Mariah Hill, Lucy Yu
Research Question: How do we make decisions when grocery shopping?
Part 1: Cultural Probes
Documentation
This cultural probe was put together as generative research to gain insight about residents of Pittsburgh and their approach to grocery shopping. Our group was particularly interested in the decision-making process of shoppers during and after their trip to the grocery store.
Included items:
1. Labeling the shopping cart or basket is informative for knowing how people utilize these tools. Is there a pattern to how people load their carts? Does the way they do it appear to have any reason or function aside from just carrying the groceries? Shopping carts and baskets are usually essential to big shopping excursions, and understanding exactly how they’re used could help make them more effective.
2. The questionnaire assesses the reason behind a decision between two products that the shopper had to make while at the store. From the original observational exercise, we noticed that shoppers often seemed to be making a choice between two items; examples include pieces of fresh produce, the same product in different brands, or similar products with slight differences. The questionnaire asks the shopper to identify their reason for picking their final choice.
3. The tactile exercise asks a shopper to interact with packaging materials and describe what they think of it. The idea behind this examines how people respond to materials that products are packaged in, possibly influencing their purchasing the product or not.
4. The photo captures all the food item a person would consider staples to his or her diet. The idea is that these items are always kept in stock around the home, and cause need for a shopping trip when they run out. We suspect that the items in this photo may give us an idea about a person’s general tastes. What kinds of food do they like the most? What kind of lifestyle does this diet suggest?
5. The guilt scale gauges how people feel after they’ve purchased an item. Reasons for feeling good or bad about a purchase could include the item’s nutritional value, or whether or not it was needed. A person is forced to reflect on why they bought the items they did as they locate its position between feeling accomplished and feeling guilty. We expect this exercise to reveal that there is at least one guilty purchase every time one goes shopping.
Responses
By item:
- Shopping cart
2. Questionnaire
3. Tactile exchange
4. Food staples
5. Guilt spectrum
By user:
- Grace
2. Lauren
3. Philip
4. Brian
5. Jennifer
Part 2: Generative Workshop
Activities:
- Card game
Items on each card were assigned price values from 1–3. Players started with 4 items and traded for items they preferred. Each round, they chose one item to drop. After a few rounds of trading and dropping, players were left with one item that they most wanted.
2. Grocery story map
We drew visual answers to the following questions on a board, and asked our participants to circle and connect their answers:
- What time of day do you go shopping?
- What is your mode of transportation?
- Do you go by yourself or with other people?
- How long do you spend in the store?
- Do you spend within your budget?
3. Role playing
We asked participants, 2 at a time, to enact their ideal cashier interaction. Each participant role played the cashier once and the shopper once.
Affinity Clusters
U1–5 (cultural probes)
- Grace
- Lauren
- Philip
- Brian
- Jennifer
U6–8 (workshop)
6. Natalie
7. Meredith
8. Juliana
We used our findings from the cultural probes and generative workshops to write out observations and start to cluster them to find common themes. Working from the bottom level of singular observations, we moved up towards broader and more general statements.
Prototyping
The next stage was to use our research findings to create a user flow in a grocery app. We took three main conclusions from the affinity clustering process to derive specific features we wanted to include in the app.
Paper prototypes:
Paper prototyping helped us identify each step that takes the user through completing a task with Shake Shop. Some features were challenging to draft on paper, such as scrolling or overlays, and we addressed these interactions when digitally prototyping. User testing revealed that our steps were straight forward and easy to follow.
Digital Prototypes
The digital prototypes allowed us to consider various aspects of the app in more depth that would influence user experience. We thought the shake function would be unique to our app, and add a fun component. During user testing, this proved to be unnecessary and slightly confusing, although users appreciated the attempt to enhance their experience. Color and layout were also important considerations; we wanted to have a clean, simple interface that made using the app pleasing and easy, vibrant and attractive.
Revised and Expanded
