Professor Prabhu’s ES101 Design Course: Group One

Majors/Graduating Class

Mikyle Alam – Economics and International Affairs, Class of 2022

Matthew Cammeyer – Mechanical Engineering, Class of 2025

Joanne Sarmiento Santillan – Civil Engineering, Class of 2025

Arthur Shirk – Mechanical Engineering, Class of 2025

Hayden van Steyn – Mechanical Engineering, Class of 2025

AutoCart

Our engineering team was tasked with designing a product to improve the grocery store experience, we decided to focus on the customer’s experience. We carefully walked through each phase of the design process, thoroughly delving into research and development before presenting our finished product. Our project was the AutoCart, a shopping cart outfitted with RFID scanners and a touchscreen interface. The user will be able to scan items as they move throughout the store, allowing them to avoid lengthy checkout lines and save valuable time at the grocery store. Learn more about the design process down below.

Research

How

Which methods will we use to collect our users’ needs?

We will use site observations and surveys to inform our study/project. Site observations can provide technical data for the problem that is being addressed, but sample a small audience. Surveys can be used to collect data from a broad audience, but do not offer in depth answers or allow empathic interactions.

Why did we pick this method? What are the anticipated advantages / disadvantages?

We picked these methods because our project intends on primarily making the users experience in a grocery store as quick as possible. The aforementioned methods will allow for us to establish a baseline average for how long individuals spending in a grocery store giving us a metric through which we can gauge if our product is beneficial or not,

Who

Identify five or more individuals who fall in your user group?

Students
Parents
Elderly individuals
Professional shoppers
Families

What are their demographics?

There is no specific demographic for who shops at grocery stores, however, because Giant (the closest grocery store) demographic is largely middle class our data will be from the same demographic.

How will we access them?

The surveys we will use will be distributed amongst different groups at Lafayette.
The site observations will be done outside of Giant in Easton.

Where/when

Identify a location where we plan to interact with these individuals.

Giant Foods

When will we interact with them – in a group or as individuals?

The surveys will be administered via a link that will take people to the survey; therefore, it will be administered individually as only one person can take the survey at a time.
The site observations will be done from outside of Giant. We will tag people walking in to the grocery store based on what they wear and time the amount of time they spend inside the store.

What

List of 10 questions and observations we want to get from our users. Questions were generated with the intention of distribution via the survey.

What is your occupation?
How long on average do you think you spend in a grocery store when you go?
Do you usually tend to have trouble finding what you are looking for?
What is your least favorite part of shopping for groceries?
What is the most important aspect for you when buying food: efficiency, cost, health, etc?
What is your favorite grocery store and why? What makes it different from the rest?
Do you usually come into the grocery store with a specific pre-made list or wander around more and just pick out what looks good to you?
What is one thing you would change about the shopping experience?
Would you enjoy shopping more or less if it was streamlined and took less time?
Do you find it important to walk through areas where you are not purchasing anything? (ex. walking past the bakery to get to the canned goods)

Data

Onsite Observations:

Dates observed:

Oct 26 – 1:00 PM to 2:15 PM

Oct 27 – 3:10 PM to 4:25 PM

Observation Method: Research was conducted using on site observations. Our group broke up into two teams on 2 separate days. We sat between the entrance and exit of the Giant grocery store in Easton and timed how long people that we tagged using the clothes they were wearing spent inside the grocery store. The timing was done using iPhone timers or equivalent android applications.

Data Gathered:

Survey Observations:

Below are some data tables generated based on our survey analysis of problems with the grocery store experience. We have included the most relevant data that was utilized in furthering our design process, data that became either irrelevant or was not helpful in our researching has been excluded.

Also, important to note are some of the answers to open-ended survey questions:

When asked what aspect made their favorite grocery more appealing than others, 34 of 69 responses indicated convenience* and ≈20% of all responses specifically used the word convenience
When asked to change one thing about the grocery shopping experience, 24% of those surveyed responded asking for faster checkout lines, less time spent in the store, or even no checkout lines at all

*All of the selected (34) answers indicated convenience and less time spent shopping/driving, for example: close to home, easy to navigate, memorable product locations, etc.

Key Demographics

Persona: We created an ideal persona that would be our target user. We used this tool to help us understand our customer, as we tried to make it accessible to the widest possible audience. We also made sure to note certain groups that our design would not apply to so that we can acknowledge those flaws.

Excluded Demographics:

Excludes the elderly (post-retirement) – do not want faster store experience, prefer relaxed to rushed
Excludes those with technological illiteracy – cannot interact with the cart screen
Excludes the visually impaired – cannot interact with the cart screen

Should include multiple languages to be more inclusive of minority groups

Anti-Persona – a tool used to condense information about those excluded from our design’s potential user base, similar to the persona

Design Goals

Our group used the chart below (format courtesy of Professor Prabhu) to help quantify our goals for this project, coming up with both constraints and objectives for our design. We also developed metrics to test our design against and determine our success.

User Need	Functional Requirement	Type (Objective or Constraint)	Metric (how will it be measured?)	Specification (target value)	Priority
Durability	Needs to be able to hold up to rough use, long life-span	Objective	Can sustain X amount of pressure	Being dropped/metal smashing into it	5
Expedited checkout	Needs to be able to recognise and scan items when deposited in cart	Constraint	Able to identify X of items placed in cart	~100%	1
Cash and/or card option	Needs to allow for customers to be able to choose payment type	Constraint	Able to read X different cards	all	2
User-friendly interface	Needs to be well organized and reliable software	Constraint	X amount of people able to use well	75%	3
Language selection	Able to translate into multiple different languages	Objective	Has x amount of language options	At least 5	4

At this stage in the design process, our group had 5 proposed solutions:

Faster check out (touchscreen cart)
Quicker shopping experience (GPS tracking)
Uploaded shopping list to cart
RFID scanner in the cart (scans items as they are placed in the cart)
Inventory tracking

We utilized a Pugh chart (see below) to help us determine which design we would focus on as we moved forward. We compared our 5 different solutions using 5 functional requirements weighted according to priority in our design. This allowed us to determine which designs were the best at meeting design requirements and consumer needs. We then used this information to determine which designs we would move forward with.

#	Functional Requirement	Weight/Priority	Touchscreen checkout	GPS tracking	Upload Shopping list checkout	RFID Scanner	Inventory Tracking
1	Reduced time in store	40	++	0	++	++	–
2	Cost efficiency	20	+	0	+	–	+
3	Customizability	5	+	0	+	—	—
4	Durability	15	+	0	–	+	+
5	Ease of use	20	+	0	+	+++	–
	Total +		80+20+5+15+20	0	80+20+5+20	80+15+60	20+15
	Total –		0	0	-15	-20-10	-40-10-20
	Total Score		140	0	110	125	-35

After analyzing this chart, we decided to combine our top two ideas (Touchscreen checkout and RFID scanner). With our design unanimously decided upon based on our research and goal analysis, we were ready to move onto the next step…

Prototyping

Prototype Planner –

We utilized Camilla Hansen’s Prototype Planner in developing our prototype model. Below you can see it divided into different sections for each phase of our prototyping process.

Frame

Purpose	Desired Outcome	Focus
Desirability (human), is our design easy to use and will people want to use it in the store?	Evaluation, we want to troubleshoot our design’s interactable interface in order to make it more intuitive and create a more pleasant shopping experience	The screen/user-interface

Build

What to Build

Build Plan

Level of Detail/Realism: 4 out of 5

Prototype must flow smoothly and complete all the users’ needs

Use Google Slides to simulate the user interface. May have difficulty interacting with certain features as if it were an actual application (clicking buttons, scanning, paying, etc.)

Test

Test Plan	Results
Tested by our classmates, professor, and his senior design students. Had users interact with the application as if they were using it in the grocery store.	Does our design have an intuitive layout? Open to any feedback from users to make our design easier to use. Test is successful if users can seamlessly simulate their shopping experience with minimal difficulties.

Act

Insights

Actions

Evaluate Test

People had difficulty clicking on the buttons, it was unclear what the purpose of the cart was

“Why am I using this?”

Paying with card slide sent users to the wrong slide if clicked in certain places

Made buttons larger and made sure that clicking on text box still functioned properly

Elaborated purpose on welcome screen

Resolved issue with card slide going to wrong location

Success: ⅘

Further testing required, not too far from final product

Our prototype provided us useful information to improve our design. After modification, the simulation did everything we wanted it to do, users were all able to successfully simulate the shopping experience and enjoyed the design. We were able to address all of the flaws that came up during testing, most were simple flaws such as buttons needing to be more clickable. We also decided to add some modifications based on feedback we received from our professor and his senior design students, the most significant being the visible inventory. We did two total rounds of testing before arriving at our final design. The first round was with fellow classmates and our professor, after which we made the buttons larger and easier to click, as well as addressing a simple slide malfunction. The professor recommended that we make it more clear why the user should be using the product, so we addressed that on the welcome screen of the application. We then tested our revised model with our professor’s senior design students and their advice led us to include an inventory list and notice a transition error. Following these revisions, we arrived at our final design…

Finished Product

Our project is not going to be developed further, however in a real-world setting we would be using our current model to make a marketable sales pitch for companies to consider funding the rest of our design process. We would also need to design a proper screen mount and develop a proper interface using app design before moving to manufacturing and distribution. There would be several more rounds of testing necessary before we would reach that point in the process. While we are far from having a final product, our Google Slides simulation serves as the tangible conclusion of our design. Follow the link included below to experience the Autocart simulation for yourself:

ES 101_ App design II*

*(Presentation was converted from Google Slides to Microsoft PowerPoint to be uploaded to website)