Embodied Shopping

Benjamin Frailey, Rhea Singh, Will Kaufman

Time Frame: 16 Days, March 2019

Project Brief: . Our goal, as a team, was to understand the lifestyle of the typical grocery shopper to provide them with a more interactive, empowering experience. We needed to, however, keep in mind the implications our solution posed to consumer convenience and business profits. In short, we were tasked with creating a more embodied experience for the contemporary grocery shopper.

Documentation:

Download it HERE

Scope

Our scope bounced around a little, originally we were looking at at a user group of people new to a grocery store who didn’t know the layout, but that proved to have too little potential. This left us in a hard place halfway through the project timeline, so we took a bold risk and completely switched user group and scenario. We would now focus on “Foodies” who like to analyze their grocery habits and try new things.

Main Solution

Our main solution was a ,little app that showed shoppers of a higher end grocery shop like whole foods, where they shopped within the shop after they scan a code on their receipt. It would show an inverse heat map of where they didn’t shop, taking past groceries trips into account. I would then generate a recipe using mostly pieces from places they did not visit, and create a map of the store showing where they can pick up said ingredients, kind of like a scavenger hunt. The app would also show “featured” recipes with their ingredients also mapped out on a home screen, as well as give the user the option to save their favorite recipes too look back on when cooking.

The idea behind this is that it would help embody shopping for the user and engross them in the shopping experience. They would be able to look back and analyze how they shop, and see all the possible foods they are missing out on. It would also give them motivation to go back to the store, and the store could advertise newer products using the featured recipes. This would be ample compensation for slightly disrupting the planned traffic of the shop.

Final Prototype

The final prototype had a few major changes:
-A more personal welcome

-no more featured recipes

-Redone recipe page

-Saved recipes being put into different categories based on genre of food

-The “favorite” symbol changed from a star to a heart

-Added the ability to regenerate new recipes if the user didn’t like the initial one

Reflection

This was an interesting project, when given kind of a broader scope and having so, so many different paths to go and accomplish a task. We also had to be very bold, during the project, because of the nature of embodiment and also the pivot halfway through. This boldness all paid off though, both in how enjoyable it made the journey and the product at the end of it. This felt like a nice small step up from the last project, and overall I felt like even though the final grade was not as gracious as the past project, I fell like i personally improved and got more confident in my UX capabilities.