Introduction

We were asked by Icemobile to come up with a solution to improve the shopping experience while increasing the customer loyalty to certain retailers. It had to be a digital product. That made it a challenging position to be in, which we liked very much. The biggest problem to overcome was the actual target group. Because if you think about it, almost everybody goes to the supermarket. Young, old, single, married, families, well, you get the picture.

We started out with investigating what drives people to do grocery shopping and try to understand the problems which they might have. But above all, we wanted to know what made them loyal to a certain supermarket.

Meet the team

Mikko Straver

Interaction Designer

Jason Teunissen

Prototyper

Mitchel Ramdjiawan

Planner & Concepter

Stijn Schiphorst

Interaction Designer

Kevin Anderson

Interface Designer

Process and Workflow

Work process

When we were working we were never really following a certain model or design process. Our work ethics were quite free. We always looked at what we needed, how we could obtain it and how fast. There was a red line with most functionalities and plans which we followed, however most of the problems and solutions were found ‘along the way’. We do not believe in solid structures, every problem requires a different solution, rigidly following a single work ethic or process would restrain us instead of supporting us.

Process and Workflow

Workflow

Our workflow was not based on a rigid structure but was more situational. This is because we believed that different problems need different ways of solving, and choosing a certain certified workflow would constrain us more than free us. The way we usually worked was we looked at a problem, researched the problem, brainstormed about solutions, research said solutions and test them. Then, based on whatever the results were for every step, we made the next decision based on the newly found information.

Process and Workflow

Research

To research the problem and possible solutions we decided to use a couple of different approaches, some old and some new. We usually started with desk research, since this was usually the fastest and one of the most reliable starting points. We would than try to find solutions that other parties have tried for certain problems (such as examples about how to create customer loyalty) and try to find out what is strong and/or weak about those concepts. We also used a few scientific papers to back up our design choices. When doing field research we mostly used common techniques such as interviewing and excursions. Some of the new research techniques we tried in the field were techniques as shadowing.

Process and Workflow

Human Resources

There were three groups involved in the development of this project. The first of which is Hogeschool Rotterdam who requested Ice-Mobile to formulate a case for us, the students and also the third party. Hogeschool Rotterdam guided us through our teacher and intermediary Jasper Schelling whilst Ice-Mobile provided the expertise of Hei-Yu Tang and Willem Verkerk. The team designing is We Are Special consisting out of Mitchel Ramdjiawan, Stijn Schiphorst, Kevin Anderson, Jason Teunissen and Mikko Straver.

Process and Workflow

Collaboration

The coöperation within the team went very well. Most of us have known eachother for years and know what they can expect from one another. Also, on a personal level, we are able to connect really well which helped the work process significantly. On a professional level we all had our own strengths, which we were able to utilize well, and weaknesses, which we were able to develop or negate thanks to good teamwork.

Customer values

After the interviews we noticed four main pillars to base our first concepts on. These were Eco friendly, Fun, Health and Effeciency.

Eco friendly

“Ik bekijk meestal de producten en controleer de houdbaarheids- datum.”
Nel van Vliet / 62 jaar

“Ik ben heel erg afhankelijk van mijn budget.”
Chelly Peterse / 42 jaar

Health

“Ik vind het belangrijk dat de producten goedkoop en goed zijn.”
Bart van Schoffel / 21 jaar

“Ik ben bereid meer te betalen voor biologische producten.”
Tim Schiphorst / 26 jaar

Fun

“Ik vind boodschappen doen niet bijzonder leuk.”
Monique Peterzen / 52 jaar

“Ik heb geen loyaliteit aan de supermarkt, maar aan mijn kinderen.”
Nanny Anderson / 46 jaar

Efficiency

“Wachten in de rij is voornamelijk heel irritant.”
Jamie v/d Stolpe / 21 jaar

“Boodschappen doen plan ik in.”
Tim Schiphorst / 26 jaar

Research in the future store, Germany

Results

Work Process

We have created an mobile application that helps users through less food away. We do this buy invoicing that groceries that have been bought and providing the users with feedback about when that product is about to expire. We also supply recipes to help inspire the user.

Results

Important Customer Insights

The most important insights that we gathered were that users don't have loyalty towards supermarkets. But we could condition there behaviour by changing something in there life so that they would be attached to a supermarket.

Results

Concept

The concept consists of an application that helps the user to make use of all the food that they have bought by showing the expiry date and recommending recipes that coincide with what the user has bought.

Results

Prototype

The application works by invoicing the groceries, it will than display its expiry date which will inturn allow the user to choose a recipe to make full use of the groceries he has bought.

Awesome process photos of amazing funz

3D Printing

For our special item we actually printed something in 3D. It's an enclosed case which can be used to hang inside a trashcan. It uses RFID to check what you've thrown into the bin so that the products you throw away will be removed from your food list. That way you don't have to track everything manually.

Discussion

Workflow and Results

We chose to work as freely as possible and tackle the problems as small individual problems while maintaining an “overall planning”. Each week we would sit down and discuss what needed to be achieved for that week, we then divided the work amongst each other. This resulted in each individual team member being able to independently create the best solution to that week's problem.

Discussion

Unpredicted Results

At first we thought it would be very cool to be able to create an innovating mobile experience. but after looking back, it isn't nearly as innovating as we thought it would be. We also thought we would have had more time to work on the product but instead we were kept busy school side projects.

Discussion

Result vs Assignment

The end result that we have created was appropriate for the assigned assignment. The assignment was to create customer loyalty for supermarkets with a mobile application. We were able to create an application that carries this vision.

Discussion

The Next Steps?

I would personally like to test this, and see what kind of results we get. It would also be interesting to talk to supermarket people.

Discussion

Reflection

I think that the most important aspect of the project was that we could see how important it was to get customer insights. Due to these insights we were able to create multiple concepts and present them to the client so that they were able to choose the one that they found most intriguing.

Conclusion

For our minor “User experience and interaction design 2013-2014” we got assigned the amsterdam based company called Icemobile. Icemobile is a company that is specialized in making applications and in particular apps for supermarkets. The assignment that was given to us by Icemobile was to “create more customer loyalty for supermarkets”.

After doing research it turns out that is not very easy to create customer loyalty for supermarkets. Most people just go to their nearest one. To tackle this problem we wanted to find out what would drive people to choose a different supermarket. We did this by focussing on two main issues that may inspire our users to make the switch. These two issues were money awareness and the environmental awareness.

The app concept that we made was Expiry, an app that helps you throw less food away. Because of this you save money and you also have less impact on the environment. The application works by showing the user when his or her food is about to expire, the app would then suggest recipes based on the food in your inventory that is about to expire to help you reduce waste.

The part that makes the user loyal is that your food only gets registered in your app at certain supermarkets using the Expiry customer card. As soon as you buy food at a different supermarket that food will not be added to the app, therefore making it more attractive for the user to shop at the supermarket connected to the app. The more time a user invests into the app by shopping at the connected supermarket, the better the app integrates into the user’s life and is then better able to support the user. This means that as soon as the user starts shopping somewhere else, where Expiry is not supported, he will lose the benefit that Expiry is giving him, giving the user extra incentive to keep shopping at Expiry supported supermarkets and thus creating customer loyalty.

First Prototype
Current Version