Whole Foods Delivery
Duration:
Nov - Dec 2020
(1 month)
Focus:
Pop-up Research, Responsive Web Design
Roles:
UX Research,
UI/UX Design
Team:
Brent Hong, Jamie Liu, Yumi Sato, Jennifer Su
Tools:
Figma, Miro
Overview
The COVID-19 pandemic has drastically altered our everyday lives. Events like going to work, attending college, or grabbing dinner with friends have been reshaped as we are encouraged to wear masks and social distance to keep our loved ones safe. Grocery shopping is an essential part of life that has also been affected by the pandemic.
For this project, my team and I worked with Amazon, a company that is more receptive to change given their customer-centric, tech-savvy culture. We explored ways to improve Whole Foods’ existing delivery service, which currently offers contactless delivery for Amazon Prime members.
How can we redesign the grocery shopping experience that keeps our users safe and provides them with the food they want? Can we create a service that continues to add value to both the user and the company after the pandemic ends?
Goal
Create a grocery delivery service that gives users the trust they feel when shopping in-person with the convenience of delivery. Design a responsive website that adds value to the users and the company, during and after the pandemic.
Problem Space
Because of our short timeline, we conducted pop-up research with directed storytelling to understand the existing problem space.
My team conducted 12 pop-up interviews, selecting a range of interviewees who have grocery shopped during the pandemic, both in-person and using a delivery service. We wanted to understand the benefits and drawbacks of both types of shopping as well as why people choose one over the other.
We recorded each experience in a customer journey map like the one below:
From our interviews, we had the following takeaways regarding the problem space:
People have varying levels of enjoyment with grocery shopping
Some dread it and see it as a chore
Others view it as a social experience or look forward to leaving the house
Anxiety caused by shopping in-person during a pandemic forces some to use delivery
Inaccurate orders or replacement choices are frustrations that are associated with delivery
Hesitance to use delivery because of the unreliable quality of delivered food or lack of faith in shopper ability, especially with produce and perishables
When grocery shopping online, it’s difficult to communicate the details of produce (quantity, ripeness, etc.)
We used an affinity diagram to better organize our thoughts, find common patterns in our research, and discover opportunities to improve a specific stage of the grocery shopping experience. I noticed and pointed out to my team that most people were hesitant to online shop because they, for one reason or another, did not trust the shopper.
We focused on addressing the following pain points:
User's distrust of shopper ability
User's dissatisfaction with quality of produce selected
Persona
With our findings and our focal pain points, we synthesized this information to create a persona. I played a large role in this discussion as I considered not only who would benefit from this reimagined grocery shopping experience, but also how they would bring value to the company.
We chose Susan to be our persona because we believe our services can add value for both Susan and Whole Foods, even after the pandemic.
Susan, a busy mom, can save time on grocery shopping, which she does not enjoy regardless of the pandemic. She can spend this saved time with her family knowing that her Whole Foods shopper will purchase and deliver the food her family needs.
Whole Foods will also benefit from the redesign. Grocery stores are part of the retail industry, which is currently in a mature life cycle. This means they face intense competition for consumers, and differentiation and repeat sales are key methods for success. In order words, grocery stores need to stand out from each other to attract customers and gain loyalty so they continue to purchase from the store.
This new service differentiates Whole Foods from other grocery stores and creates trust (and loyalty) in the store.
Final Prototype
Following multiple rounds of iteration, from paper prototypes with think-aloud testing to high-fidelity prototypes, my team arrived at our final deliverable:
The Reimagined Experience
Our reimagined grocery shopping experience gives busy moms like Susan the convenience of delivery with the reliability of in-person shopping. Susan can rest assured, trusting that her shopper will find the right produce for her and her family.
It is a Saturday evening, and Susan has finally put her sons to bed. She opens her laptop and goes to the Whole Foods website to order her groceries for the week.
She wants to make tacos for Sunday’s dinner, so she adds 3 soft avocados to her cart, knowing they will be perfect for the next evening’s guacamole.
As Susan proceeds to the checkout, she can select the option to view the order before the shopper checks out, giving her the chance to approve the produce and make any last-minute changes if needed.
The following afternoon, Susan is at Zach’s soccer practice when she receives a text from Whole Foods about her order. When she views the message, she sees a link that she can click that will lead her to the website to approve or disapprove her produce selection.
Note: We wanted to give the users the convenience of delivery with the trust of in-person shopping. After considering when users would want to switch over to their mobile device, we imagined that many would view and confirm their order on the go, which is why we chose to display the rest of the wireframes on mobile.
As Susan goes to review her order, she is quite tired from her day would rather order pizza than cook tonight. She decides to make guacamole for Taco Tuesday instead, and using the website, she can easily swap out the avocados for ones that are less ripe so they do not go bad, as illustrated in the screens below.
After making these changes, Susan puts down her phone and returns her attention to Zach’s practice. She does not have to worry about her groceries because she knows that she will return home to her Whole Foods delivery at her front door.
Future Iterations
If my team had more time to work on the project, our next steps would be to:
User test to observe if the 10-minute responsive window is an appropriate amount of time
User test to see if users can easily select the produce they would like to swap or return
Explore other methods of displaying the produce, such as with a carousel, or allow the user to zoom in on the produce image
Final Takeaways
From this project, I realized how I can add value to a team with my business background. Since we proposed modifying an existing service, we needed to consider how the change would add value to both the user and the business, and I found myself leading these conversations with my teammates.
Our largest hurdle was ensuring the persona that would benefit from this redesign and benefit the company. We understood that not everyone will want to switch to only using delivery, so we had to specifically cater our persona to people who would prefer delivery currently because of the pandemic and/or people who value efficiency and dislike in-person shopping.
My understanding of the retail (grocery) industry helped me identify that the ultimate goal of this service on the business side would be to help Whole Foods differentiate itself from its competitors and create customer loyalty. Because I could view the persona through the business lens, I drove the conversation in modifying our persona forward to satisfy these needs.
Our reimagined Whole Foods delivery service adds value to users with its convenience and reliability. It adds value to Whole Foods by drawing customers from competitors and creating loyalty in the competitive industry to increase its market share and profits.