Industrial Design Capstone - Summer 2020 - Professor Kevin Shankwiler and Professor Yaling Liu
Soteria is a service design project, a system created to simplify and better shoppers experiences while grocery shopping during the pandemic. It combines digital interfaces and physical products to create the ideal system.
Personal Project Contributions:
Shopping Cart: Ideation, Design, Prototyping, Testing, 3D Modeling + User Research, Data Frameworks, User Testing
This research was collected from several different resources such as: large scale surveys detailing the publics attitudes towards public spaces during this time, virtual interviews, in person observations, and our own surveys. We then used the data collected and analyzed to create our own design criteria for this project.
The cart’s phone holder allows users to easily integrate the GPS feature that is part of our app design.
While working on the initial form for the cart, I also conducted user testing of a quick prototype with the people within my household. I specifically tested how they responded to a phone mount on the cart, with the goal of reducing taking a possibly contaminated phone in and out of purses or pockets while shopping.
Based on human factors principles, I decided the best way to communicate sensor feedback to users in a meaningful way was through a combination of a sliding scale and colored LEDs. These lights allow the user to understand what is being communicated at a quick glance and then take any necessary action.
Based on user and professor feedback, I realized that it would be most helpful for the carts to sense other people instead of other carts. Since the end goal was to help shoppers avoid other people in the store, so this change required a change in the sensor technology used. Additionally I wanted to move away from our initial concept of these sensors being an add on to existing carts and create a new cart with the technology embedded.
I simplified the LED feedback and altered their placement in the refined version of the cart. I wanted to more intuitively communicate to users where they were in relation to other people in the store. I also realized after getting user feedback on the design, that the multiple flashing colors was sending too much feedback to the users for them to process properly. So I decided to align LED strips with the proximity sensors on the inside rim of the cart to easily show which sensor was being activated, and I decided that the LED lights would only provide feedback if someone was within 6 feet of the cart for more than 10 seconds. This simplifies the feedback and doesn’t overload the user with information and only alerts them when absolutely necessary.
We created a simulation that helps the user imagine themselves walking through a real store following the story line we provided them, and they followed along with app. They got to experience how the artifacts work by exploring the animations we created in the sim and reading the info provided in the app. After the virtual shopping journey, they filled out a detailed survey about their thoughts on each one of our 5 components and the system overall, and we had 12 people participate. I conducted in person testing with family while a survey was sent for some to do on their own.
Our survey results and interview responses informed us that our system did a fairly good job of providing grocery store customers with a feeling of increased safety with a little over 90% of respondents saying the system would make them feel safer while shopping to some degree. We saw similar results in terms of perceived cleanliness the system would provide customers. With a little over 83% of respondents saying the system was effective at promoting cleanliness. Although this is a slightly lower score 58% respondents said the system did a very good job of promoting cleanliness opposed to 33% of respondents who said the system was very effective at creating a sense of safety while grocery shopping. The efficiency metric of our system is the portion that had the lowest score in terms of effectiveness.
Through the simulation responses we were able to identify that constant sanitization opportunities throughout the store were most powerful in inciting a sense of safety amongst grocery store shoppers. This is seen within both write in responses and opinion polls. Based on this feedback we altered our system to include sanitizing stations within the pantry section of grocery stores and not just in the freezer section, in order to provide customers with an increased feeling of safety since this item was the largest contributing factor. We also added app pop ups within our GPS feature to educate shoppers on where these key sanitization touch points are throughout the store and how they are used to increase the effectiveness of the app when it comes to shopping efficiently.
View our full process book here: Soteria Process Book