This is the question my group started with at the beginning of this ethnographic research project for our Human Centered Design course. We were tasked with identifying a problem we faced in our daily lives that we could use to conduct user research, ideate solutions, and design a prototype of one of our solutions. After a quick brainstorming session, we discovered a collective hatred towards the grocery shopping process, a great starting point for this project.

In order to answer the initial question, we needed to determine if our disdain for grocery shopping was shared outside of the group. After a brief survey of friends, family, and classmates, we found that the vast majority of people had at least some gripes with grocery shopping, so we moved forward to observations and interviews.

While another group member started making observations at grocery stores, I conducted four 15-minute interviews with subjects from a wide range of backgrounds. I developed questions based on our initial problem statement and added/changed some after each interview based on the answers I received. In an ideal world, I would have conducted many more interviews, but that was outside of the scope of this project.

From there, we created some diagrams highlighting the issues we identified through our research. On the left is a cognitive map outlining general factors that we found contributed to good and bad grocery experiences. The right details specific things in grocery stores that contribute to tedious processes.

Our biggest takeaway from our research was that people value their time when it comes to grocery shopping, so anything that increases time spent shopping was generally viewed as negative. We also learned that shoppers generally did not enjoy the self-checkout process as it is often overcomplicated and frequently requires employee assistance. From there, we began brainstorming potential design solutions.

After a few brainstorming sessions, we created storyboards for three potential solutions. Below, you can see the storyboards I created for a grocery kiosk that would exist at the front of the store. The left storyboard shows the issue we identified while the right shows how the kiosk would address the issue.

After careful consideration, we decided to move forward with a cart scanner/tablet idea. This would allow shoppers to scan items as they go in order to save time in the checkout process. We created a paper prototype as well as some basic wireframes in order to conduct some initial tests.

Through our testing, including heuristic evaluations and cognitive walkthroughs, we determined that our solution was simple to use and addressed a number of the issues we identified in our research. However, questions of security came up a number of times, as there was not much stopping a shopper from simply not scanning certain items. If we were to continue working on this project, we would take our data from testing, revise the prototype, and conduct further tests. 

All in all, this project taught me how to identify design problems, conduct UX research, and perform basic testing. I learned that behind any successful UI design solution is a mountain of data from observations, user interviews, and user testing, and I look forward to developing my skills as a UX researcher and designer in the future.