The Friendly Grocers
Client: The friendly Grocers
The Friendly Grocer is a collective of individually owned Independent Supermarkets.What we did: Developed a feature on The Friendly Grocers Website that enabled customers to 'Click and Collect' their food shopping during covid. My Role: My involvement in this project included end-to-end UX with a special focus on the design phase which I project managed.
Why we did it:
help people to shop online for their groceries during Covid where customers wanted to practice safe distancing.
How we did it:
Research
User Interviews
Synthesis
Design
User Testing
Deliver
The Challenge
The Friendly Grocers at the time had a minimal online presence in a market where online shopping is becoming increasingly popular, especially during the covid lockdown period.
Our mission was to create a digital product to give Friendly Grocers shoppers access to an online grocery shopping experience.
We researched and designed an MVP which brought together a practical solution that aligned with the user's needs and the business’s short and long-term goals.
The Solution
We developed a feature within the existing Friendly Grocers Website that would allow customers to shop for thier food online and arrange a click and collect time to pick up their shopping. As the supermarket did not deliver food shopping the customers could practice safe distancing and quickly collect their food shopping in a safe way.
The Process
Using the Double Diamond method of :
Discover Define Design Deliver
Discover
Research
Our research efforts included Market research, researching the Business, and User interviews
1. Researching the Client
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Researched the client's business structure; Friendly Grocer is a collective of independent, small-sized supermarkets with no current online shopping or ordering options.
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Considered a solution that is cost-effective and easy to implement.
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Due to Covid lockdown restrictions, we couldn’t conduct in-store customer interviews and had to find alternative ways to research grocery shopping habits.
2. Market Research
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Covid restrictions led to increased consumer demand in retail markets, causing stock shortages due to impacted manufacturing and shipping.
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Online shopping demand surged, resulting in higher sales for online retailers but also significant delivery delays for consumers.
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Businesses in CBD areas experienced a turnover loss as many city workers shifted to remote work.
3. User Interviews-Retail and Wholesale Workers
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Interviewed retail and wholesale workers involved in online shopping systems.
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Gained insights from Secondary Personas to guide short-term solutions and long-term plans for Friendly Grocer.
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Explored experiences before, during, and after Covid to identify key changes and improvements.
We interviewed 9 shoppers and a picker packer
Define
Synthesis
Affinity Mapping
What users said"
“I am having a lot of trouble getting delivery due to covid”
“Due to covid, I shop for groceries online as i don’t want to be near others during covid”
“I use my local grocery shop to do top up shops in between the big shops, and to get last minute items”
Some of the key insights that we discovered were as follows:
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Covid led many new customers to online grocery shopping.
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Shoppers preferred bulk orders online, using local grocers for smaller, frequent purchases.
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Long delivery time slots, often booked days in advance, caused frustration.
Persona
Persona 1
Empathy Map
Completing the empathy map really helped us to resonate with the user and made us see them as more human.
Journey Map
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Helped us to see current shopping behaviour.
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See pain points and frustrations.
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Showed us that Nicole was waiting a hours for her groceries.
Problem Statement
"Nicole needs to receive her groceries promptly because she is currently
frustrated with spending too much time waiting to receive her grocery delivery"
How Might We Statement
"How might we help Nicole stay in the loop while waiting to receive her groceries?"
"How might we help Nicole receive her groceries quickly?"
Ideation
Crazy 8's
How we could keep Nicole in the loop.
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‘Text message’,
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‘map tracker,’
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‘keep Nicole informed of the drivers’ movements
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Personal phone call from staff.
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Does not want to wait in all day.
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Wants notifications.
The Crazy 8’s solidified our assumptions that people want convenient and covid safe shopping methods that overcome the current delays faced by larger chains.
we decided the solution with the most immediate impact was a ‘Click and Collect service’
Design
User Flow
We created a user flow in Miro to determine our wireframes.
We intentionally created the "Click and Collect Time" as the first feature entered.
This means that if Nicole wanted something for lunch in a few hours she will first determine if that pick up time is available
To align with shoppers' use of small grocers for top-ups, our service will have no minimum spend, setting it apart from large chains.
Solution & User Testing.
Priority Features:
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Locate your nearby store.
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Select your pick-up time.
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Search bar function with direct “add to cart” from the search dropdown.
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Despite placing store selection at the top left, 4 out of 6 users initially tried to shop via the search bar.
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To guide them, we added a pop-up prompting store selection.
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A comparative study of an airline booking site led us to use drop-down menus for store and pick-up time selection.
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Users responded well to the streamlined flow, and we simplified further by having the time drop-down open automatically after date selection.
During testing, all users questioned if items were added to the cart, as the -/+ graphic didn’t change, leading all 6 users to click it again.
The "Added to Cart" would replace the +/- button once an item was added to the cart to provide clearer confirmation.
We couldn’t gather insights on the "Add to Cart" from Search feature due to a prototype fault—only typing "C" would activate the search, which was unintuitive, leading users to switch to the menu.
However, 4 out of 6 users initially tried to shop via the search bar, suggesting it may prove successful in future testing.
We conducted only one round of user testing before we had to finalise the project.
Conclusion
If the Click and Collect service is popular with customers and shown to increase profit some Friendly Grocer stores may be able to upgrade to a delivery service.
Key Takeaways
Consistent Testing: Prototype faults can hinder insights; ensure components work smoothly before testing to gather accurate user feedback.
Iterate Based on Behavior: Observing how users actually interact with features (like preferring search over menus) is crucial for refining the design to meet user habits and preferences.
Using Crazy 8's: this proved to be beneficial for the team and sometimes the soloution ideas you need to quickly put down on paper prove to be the good ones.