Improving Grocery Store Design

How might we inspire families to adopt healthier eating habits?

A personal project developed during an online IDEO class "Insights for Innovation". The class assigned the above topic, and gave suggested exercises. The goal of the class was to develop skills such as empathy for customers, and developing insights about your customers.

Step 1: Observe

Encouraging families to adopt healthier eating habits is a large problem to tackle. It could be approached by increasing awareness about nutrition, making it easier for families to buy fresh produce, tackling picky eaters (children), etc.

I wanted to focus on a topic I could relate to (as a recent college graduate not only do I not yet have children most of my friends are also childless). I therefore decided to focus my observations on the grocery store experience. My goal was that through careful observation and interviews I would find some design opportunities that would make it easier for families to shop for healthy meals.

I started the project by going to my local grocery store. I took note of the layout, the clientele, how people (adults and children) interacted with the displays, and ultimately took note of what they choose to buy.

Observations From My Grocery Store

There is a cute grab a fruit basket at the front for kids
But I RARELY see kids (now or ever before)
It is Sunday afternoon and there are no kids today either.
I mainly see people my age (young professionals with no kids) or older adults (probably post kids)
There are Lots of healthy organic options, the shop is co-op style and slightly more expensive then other shops in the area

Afterthoughts:

This is a pretty "earthy crunchy" grocery store with a focus on local and organic food. It is a little more expensive and requires me to go out of my way to shop there, so it probably isn't a great representation of a typical family grocery store.

Other Observations

Pick n Save

One child with their grandparent (or older care taker)
They had lots of fresh greens, bread and fruit in their cart
One mom with five kids
Overheard the mom say “I won’t buy it if you won’t eat it” in regards to a specialty tomato sauce
They had lots of pasta, pre-cut vegetables and ground beef in their car

Afterthoughts

I live nearby a college campus and there were lots of college kids buying chips, sodas, sweets
Displays for kid-targeted food was minimal and seemed well stocked, I wonder if this means they aren’t popular

Costco

Lots of salad greens (the ones in those plastic bins)
Families avoided big &messy fruit and vegetables (One family the daughter asked for a watermelon and the mom said no)
Lots of go-gurt and un-crustables
Lots of individually packaged snacks
Lots of families had Costco roast chicken (an internet favorite – apparently so popular Costco had to buy its own chicken farmers to keep up with demand)
Lots of pre-prepared Costco pasta dishes (chicken alfredo etc)
More snacks than sweets (like cupcakes or desserts)
Lots of frozen pizza and granola bars

Afterthoughts

This is a store focused on providing bargain shopping for big families, they can get bulk products for cheaper than the local grocery store. It requires a membership and as a result tends to be a middle-upper middle class grocery store

Target

Very few people shopping in the grocery section (probably because it is quite a bit more expensive than the food-specific markets)
Most of the parents had lots of uncrustables, goldfish large packs and snack foods in their carts

Afterthoughts

Kids seem to love Target, mainly because of the toys, lots of parents were promising a trip to the toy aisle for good behavior

Metro Market

Popular items included cuties, bannanas, apples and other grab and go fruit
Lots of bottled water
Easy on-off breakfast like cereal, bagels, and single serving yogurt was popular
Pre-cut vegetables were popular

Afterthoughts

More families then at any of the other stores
Lots of kids dancing (litterally) in aisle

Example of some of the pre-made meals at Costco. These seem to be super popular.

Chips and snack food are some of the foods at kid level, the way they are arranged allow them to be picked up easier. Lots of colors and shapes make this a fun aisle for kids (but not healthiest)

Takeaways:

There were few kids at the grocery specific market but lots of kids at target. However all of the Target families ended up in the toy section at some point or another.

This made me think about the kids I saw at the grocery stores, they all looked bored, and were often watching something on their phone, trying to talk to their distracted parent, or dancing (I saw A LOT of dancing in the aisles).

I realized that the kids toy section (in fact most of target) is set up to encourage kids to grab things, play with them and put them back (look at the picture to the right). In contrast the kids in grocery stores were often told not to touch anything. In grocery stores there are lots of shelves and displays where once you take something down it is hard to put it back up (they are spring loaded, or could cause things to tumble easily)

Most of the adults were using a paper list or a list on their phone and seemed annoyed and rushed. Their kids were never involved in the picking out of the food.

Though we can learn a lot from observing our surroundings we are still restricted by our biases, access to users, and even local trends. I wanted to learn a little more about what parents look for when grocery shopping and meal planning. So I looked at the most common search results on Google, and checked out some of the most popular family food bloggers.

I then wanted to consider some of the "extreme" users that should be considered when designing grocery stores, or my solution.

Step 2: Background Research and Extremes

Google Search Terms

I searched “family dinner” and tried to count the most common words I saw in the titles of the first page of the search. This is how many times these words came up:

“Easy” -> 6
“healthy” -> 1
“busy” -> 1
“family friendly” -> 3
“quick” -> 2
“quick and easy” -> 3
“30 min” -> 1

Popular topics that popped up on google when searching for “family dinner blog”

The terms, “fast”, “family friendly” and “healthy” come up a lot
Rarely did the comments focus on kids or feeding kids (I think the blog is mainly for the moms)
Crock pots came up A LOT

There are several lenses we could consider when finding a user:

Family stage/structure (college kid, family with young kids, family with kids that can drive)
Level of expertise in cooking
Income – a lot of the background research I did revolved around bloggers and grocery stores that attract or assume a certain level of income and food security

We can use these lenses to understand extreme users. Examples of extreme users are:

Life Stage: a family with several young children, a single parent, a family with high school age children (that can drive themselves)

Level of expertise in cooking: beginner cook (a child or possibly a parent that has never cooked before or has taken over cooking in the home), advanced cook (professional cook, a food blogger, experienced baker)

Income level: a family that is reliant of food stamps, vs a family that can afford a meal delivery service, child care that provides food, or even a hired chef

Step 3: Interview

Interviews are the best way to learn from our users. I reached out to one of our family friends. This family has two children (both under the age of ten) and two working parents. I wanted to learn more about how they make their meal time decisions, and how they used the grocery store.

The goal of this interview was to avoid leading questions. I tried to take a step back and make sure that I was asking broad questions that could challenge my earlier assumptions.

Interview Takeaways

The user tends to grocery shop alone
She goes grocery shopping late Thursday nights, usually right before picking up her son from an activity.

"The store is not crowded - a big plus! It [normally] would take me around 30 min to get everything on my list"

The kids only go with her on Friday nights
When the kids do come along, they sit in the cart or follow her and her husband around
The kids never help pick out food
Priorities: Quality
Usual Choices: vegetables, fruit, chicken

"For fresh produce, I prefer organic if the cost is reasonable"

"I love grocery shopping. Costco and BJs have their own plus or minuses in terms of choices. But I love the fact that I can get 90% of what I need at a reasonable cost and good quality in those stores."

Step 4: Empathy Excercise

The course encouraged us to develop an "empathy exercise" that allowed us to see the world from the point of view of our user.

At this point In the project I was very interested in understanding what the children experience in the grocery store, and decided to develope an exercise that would show me what they saw. I decided to walk through the grocery store fruit section on my knees, and to have a friend push me around in a cart.

I realized very quickly that most of the food in a grocery store are very out of reach for children. This then led me to realize there are similar issues for all customers with reduced mobility, in wheel chairs, etc.

I started to wonder, what would it look like if grocery stores were designed to be more accessible to users with disabilities? Would this make grocery stores more inviting for children as well?

Step 5: Insights & Brainstorm

Insights: A well designed grocery store could engage children and teach them lifelong healthy habits.

What does this mean?

It means that we should have grocery stores that not only allow but encourage children to be part of the shopping and meal planning experience.

Most “healthy food” sections are too tall and children are discouraged to touch the food.

Many aisles with chips and sodas are at kid eye-height and encourage them to pick out and ask for unhealthy snacks.

When children act out at grocery stores (often out of boredom) it encourages parents to leave quickly, or leave the children at home.

When children are engaged (better behaved at grocery stores) parents are more likely to choose healthy meals over “quick” processed meals and snacks.

This not only improves eating habits but also teaches the children good eating habits.

When brainstorming solutions I always try to come up with a physical, a systems based solution, and an app or web based solution. This forces me to not to rely solely on my background (product design) or the "easy" solution of creating an app for everything.

Possible Ideas:

Design a grocery store with lower shelves that allow kids to reach and interact with food (this would also help users in wheelchairs or with other limited mobility)

Use an app to engage kids with meal planning while entertaining them at a grocery store

Have a section of the grocery store specifically designed for kids to shop in:
- This could be an aisle with an easy to assemble meals like spaghetti and meatballs
- Like Build A Bear stores, there could be "steps" where the kids collect each part of the meal and learn about healthy eating

A sticker book that encourages kids to pick up stickers around the store while shopping (and learning nutrition facts)

A "make your own trailmix" or "make your lunch" station, where an employee helps kids assemble their own school lunches while their parents shop.

Step 6: Prototype

Though there were a number of possible solutions I focused on a solution that was easy to prototype and test it. My goal was for it to be easy to validate as either a good solution, or to be quickly set aside so that other solutions could be considered. This is the essence of rapid prototyping, and allows for an effective use of research and user feedback early in the design process.

Research:

I researched the most popular grocery store and kid apps to inspire my new design. I found Target's Cartwheel app to be very popular, particularly the recipe suggestions. I also used popular kids apps to help design the colors and functions of my app.

I decided that by gamifying the app I could encourage kids to keep playing while also learning about healthy eating.

The app I designed has three different "levels" or challenges. This helps target several different ages.

The Challenge Mode (targeted for ages 7+ to ~11 who want a challenge, but might not be allowed to wander the store on their own)
A challenge to find all the components of a recipe under a time limit and/or spending limit.
The Explore Mode (targeted for under 7 year olds who are expected to stay close to their parents, often in the cart).
Allows one to scan for anything in the store and learn facts about it (fun for all ages)
The Treasure Hunt (targeted for tweens and teenagers who can wander the store on their own).
The game asks one to find certain items in the store based on hints or facts about the item.