User Experience at the Grocery Store
User Experience design affects everything and anything that we humans interact and create an experience with. Apps and websites may come to mind, but really user experience can benefit any product, interaction or yes, even space. If you walk through downtown Denver on Curtis Street, you might pause for a minute and wonder if you are imagining things — that you couldn’t have heard a seagull, crashing waves, or a lion’s roar. But actually, you did — and it is coming from the drainage grates on the sidewalk. Speakers making funny noises under the grates may not be very practical, but they create a positive experience for you rather than your typical annoyance or disgust having to step over or around them. Why can’t we apply these positive experiences to more of the spaces we interact with on a daily basis?
As a part of a recent class assignment, we were tasked with observing a place of our choosing and taking notes about the interaction and flow of people within that space. I decided to spend my time in the grocery store because frankly, we all have to go to the grocery store and probably spend a significant portion of our lives inside grocery stores, so why not make them more enjoyable to be in? Also, you may have heard that Amazon recently purchased Whole Foods which means big challenges for traditional grocery chains in the upcoming years going up against such a powerhouse. I challenged myself to observe my local grocery store and think of ways they could improve their user experience in the hopes of considering solutions that could a) improve the experience of the shopper (you and me) and b) help standard grocery stores keep up with the digital age.
To begin, I went to King Soopers (owned by Kroger) on Sunday morning at 9:30 a.m. I personally never shop at this time because I’d rather be in bed, but I was curious about this very productive morning crowd. In case you’ve never been in a King Soopers, I’ve included some photos in this article. It’s your standard grocery store — a huge box with rows and rows of food aisles, a pharmacy in the back, and many poorly placed displays blocking the path of your cart. When you first walk in, there is a big display with a table full of papers encouraging you to join their team, to the left is the produce and meat section, and to the right is all of your packaged and frozen foods. It is very difficult to go straight, as you have to maneuver the hiring display and then dodge all the flower displays to finally get to the birthday cards or school supplies. The design is outdated, the layout causes traffic issues, and the laminate tile is a putty color, but since I come here so often I find it comforting.
There are a lot of people at the grocery store this early — and I quickly realized that it’s very hard to observe everything at once because there is so much going on. The very first thing that happened when I walked in was that the lady in front of me ran her cart straight into the giant “We’re Hiring!” sign that was placed directly in our path at the entrance. A guy next to me had a store associate help him locate the cherry tomatoes. Another guy accidentally ripped off 2 extra produce bags and tried to set them back, and the guy behind him didn’t grab either of those, but proceeded to pull out a new bag. Both of them then struggled to open the bags (how much of our lives have we spent trying to open produce bags?).
Little things like this were happening all over the store. But here are my main takeaways from the morning shift: 5x more people were using carts than baskets, morning people prefer to go through regular checkout and interact with a store associate, about 2/3 of the people there were over 30, there were over 30 associates working, several people actually came up and spoke to me, and on a Sunday morning in Colorado, 60% of the store is wearing Broncos apparel. The intent of the space is pretty obvious with King Soopers, most people are here to buy food or go to the pharmacy in the back. Almost everyone goes to the left when they walk in — and this is true no matter what time of day I found. It seemed like this is because the way the displays are set up, they are guiding you to the left, and to go straight or to the right means having to maneuver around tighter spaces with your cart.
Signage in King Soopers is pretty minimal, there are 3–4 words above each aisle describing the aisle’s contents, and large text over the main sections — meat, dairy, bakery, etc. I’m attributing this decision to the tendency of King Soopers and other chains to follow the same organization— so if I walked into any surrounding King Soopers, I would know where my favorite tortilla chips were because they kept the same layout consistent throughout. I think this consistency in layout works in their favor. In this sense, I think people largely ignore signage in the stores and are very focused on their shopping. I’m going to go out on a limb and say we always don’t expect high level design from grocery stores because we need what they are selling, so we put up with it, or we go to Whole Foods and pay more.
When I went back at lunch on Monday, around 12:30 p.m., the place was a bit busier than the weekend morning shift. The ratio of 30+ to younger people was still skewed in favor of the 30+ crowd. Carts yet again way outnumbered baskets, and the number of people in self-checkout and regular checkout was about even. Yet again, 90% of shoppers went directly to the left (actually, they had to go right to get their cart and then left) towards produce. The evening shift (5:30 p.m.) was the busiest of all the times I observed, probably because it’s convenient to stop at the store on the way home from work. The only real difference in behavior was that their was a pretty even age range in the store at this hour compared to the earlier times.
My final observation was the late night grocery goers — at around 10:45 p.m. King Soopers closes at 12 a.m. near me. This (small) crowd is pretty unique, which may or may not be surprising. They don’t seem to use carts or baskets, because they are there on a mission and are usually out of the store in under 10 minutes and only carrying one bag. The under 30 crowd greatly outnumbers the over 30 crowd at this time. The number of store associates drops down to about 7. And oddly enough, these night owls fought the displays (probably because they didn’t have a cart to lug around) and went straight and to the right — very few went to the left towards the produce. Regular checkout is not an option this late, so all of them checked themselves out. One girl literally jogged into the store and jogged out.
I will say that considering the enormous selection of products King Soopers carries, their organization and consistency across stores is impressive. While there are areas where cart traffic builds up, in general I think having every aisle having an “exit” to checkout is thoughtful and helpful — if someone is blocking my path in one aisle I can just move to the next to make my way through. So while I wouldn’t say they are excelling in these areas, they have created an environment that allows people to accomplish their goal.
That being said, a major issue I observed was poorly marked aisles for people who weren’t familiar with the King Soopers layout — even I still struggle to find items from time to time. I witnessed 6 different people ask for help finding something — cherry tomatoes, chicken bouillon cubes, parmesan cheese, etc. There are whispers about not needing actual people in stores anymore, but as long as we don’t address organization issues, people are obviously still needed. Another blatant issue was the sheer number of displays blocking everyone’s path. I think the sheer number of products in the store makes it feel cluttered and it’s very distracting for shoppers, as well as cumbersome to maneuver around. Perhaps the strategy is that if it’s in your way you are forced to notice it, but it seemed to be much more of a frustration and I didn’t see a single person pick anything up off a promotional display.
When considering a solution, I really wanted to focus on these pain points of customers. Amazon’s concept of shopping without check out is very alluring as a consumer because it makes things easier. I think chain markets like King Soopers really need to consider how they are going to alleviate some of the stress and inefficiencies of how people are currently shopping in their stores. Something that surprised me was how many people used the carts, and the many ways they used them. People were placing their baby carriers in the cart, their purses, even their breathing machines. The appeal seems to be the hands free aspect so that they can shop unencumbered by their items and personal belongings.
Organization, as I mentioned, is obviously an issue. Carts are large and hard to maneuver around the many displays — but I do believe they are a comforting and familiar part of the shopping process. So I didn’t want to do away with carts, but I did want to take some ideas from David Rose’s book, ‘Enchanted Objects.’ Everyday objects we already know how to use can become ‘smart’ to our wants and needs. So why can’t the shopping cart be more in tune with our shopping needs?
Currently these chunks of metal purely carry our products to our cars, but I feel like they could be doing so much more than that. King Soopers uses member rewards cards, or your ‘alternate ID,’ that gets your rewards points, savings on groceries and on fuel at their gas stations. You can log onto their app or website and download coupons to your account or create shopping lists. I think it would be beneficial for your cart to know your shopping list.
My hypothetical ‘smart’ cart would scan your member card and your shopping list would be stored by the cart for the duration of your shopping trip. Sensors on the aisles and on the cart would allow the cart to lightly vibrate when you were passing an aisle that had an item on your list on it. This takes away the need for understanding the aisle layout and for cluttered store directory boards. Sensors inside the cart could understand what you added to your cart and live remove it from your list. I wanted to avoid screens, since I think we stare at screens enough all day long, and adding a screen might potentially increase your time in store by giving you too much information. Instead, I would like to see AI play a role as your voice activated personal assistant. You could simply speak, “Add tomato sauce” or “Remove creamer” and your AI helper would remove it from list. They could speak back to you if you asked “Where is the pizza crust located?” I think these interactive and haptic responses from your cart would not only help organization issues by making items easier for shoppers to find, but would also make shopping a more enjoyable and stress-free experience.
My solution to the secondary problem could utilize these smart carts, but would address the clutter issue of current stores. We spent our first week in Experience Design class discussing the paradox of choice: too many choices is paralyzing, not liberating. Seeing the vast amount of products in a grocery store is overwhelming and can cause people to waste a lot more time in the store and away from things they enjoy or value. I observed countless people aimlessly wandering through aisles comparing boxes. Right now there may be 15 types of pasta sauce, but I see 200 products on the shelf in front of me, since there are 15 of each of those 15. I don’t think we will see a disappearance of brands anytime soon, but I do think we could consider a shopping experience in which inventory is not stocked in sight of the consumer.
Decreasing the store front that customers see could actually help decrease the stress of choice and decrease shopping time. If King Soopers kept a ‘sample size’ so to speak, like a shoe company might as a display — you could greatly decrease the size of the store. Instead of 200 pasta sauces, you would just see the 15. You would use your smart cart scanner to scan the item you wanted, and this would send an order to the system to add it to your cart. Scanning it again would remove. When you go to check out — all items have been prepared for you based on this digital system, and you can pay and leave without having to carry the weight of all the items with you throughout the store. This could expand into home delivery of those items (potentially drone-based), or drive thru pick ups to decrease traffic at check out.
There are potentially endless ways to infuse the grocery shopping experience with useful technology. King Soopers has a very clear insight into shopping behaviors of their customers and an incredibly diverse customer base. They can and should use this information not just for advertising purposes, but also for user experience insights. I believe my solutions look at just two ways King Soopers could consider creating a more delightful and convenient shopping experience for their customers. I know I don’t want to see chain grocery stores get eaten up by giant organizations like Amazon, but time will tell if grocers will be able to keep up with technological innovations.
