Target Smart-Cart &
Collaborative Shopping
Reimagining the Shopping Experience
Overview
Context
Walmart’s pickup towers, Amazon Go’s brilliant ‘Just-walk-out’ concept, and Giant Food Store's google-eyed robot Marty are some of the many indications of a revolutionized tech-infused era of brick & mortar shopping. I worked in a team of 4 to answer the challenge of this tech-driven change in physical shopping experiences for one of the retail giants, Target.
Problem
Enhance the in-store shopping experience, from entering the store to checkout, for all Target store shoppers.
Solution
We desinged a ‘smart-shopping’ experience that redefines physical shopping by conceptualizing:
• Create shopping lists quickly and collaboratively in Target's Mobile App
• Tap your phone on the smart-cart tablet in Target that guides you through the store using augmented reality technology
• Just scan items before placing them inside carry-bags in your cart, and enjoy an effortless checkout when you're done
Timeline
Sept - Dec 2018
3 months
Team
Modassir Iqbal
Jashan Gupta
Xueyin Airy Liu
Varsha Kori
Role
UX Researcher and Product designer
Contextual Interviews, Analysis & Model Creation, Interaction & Visual Design
Tools
Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Figma, Miro, Sketch, Loom
Understanding
In the background research, we identified grocery-shopping as one of the areas where Target’s growth seemed imminent as it contributes 20% to Target’s annual revenue while holding just 1% share in the grocery-retail industry (Cheng. A, Forbes 2019).
We wanted to observe and inquire about the activities, challenges, and emotions of the participants while they shopped inside Target stores so contextual inquiry was a great fit as a research method. We recruited 9 participants of varying ages, occupations, frequency of visiting stores & shopping attitudes.
Contextual Inquiry while shopping (Google image)
We used the qualitative from CIs data to build an affinity diagram to analyze the different themes in user research & find design opportunities.
Part of Completed Affinity Diagram
Pain points & Opportunities
We gathered a large number of findings from over 2 months of user research and analysis, listed here. The following snippets highlight a few that were critical in conceptualizing the design concepts.
Difficulty recalling what needs to be bought
People often make lists before entering a store - some prefer physical or digital lists while others take mental notes.
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They often forget items, need to consult others regarding their needs/choices and mix up items that they want to buy at different stores.
Design Opportunities: Collaborative and reusable lists, Recommended and repeat items
Difficulty locating aisles and finding desired products
We observed our participants wandering across the store to find the right aisles because of undescriptive labels on signs. Even inside aisles, participants missed their desired product, especially when these products when not placed at eye-level. This led to frustrating user experiences and lost sales.
Design Opportunities: More efficient guidance to aisles and desired products
Finding relevant product information is cumbersome
We observed that different shoppers cared about different aspects and information in a product like calorie content, expiry dates, weight etc. Since this information is finely printed in different places on different products, shoppers have a hard time making buying decisions.
Design Opportunities: A single place & format for all kinds of product info (like e-commerce)
Manually comparing products is inefficient
Shoppers want to compare products across different aspects like price/discounts, and are often afraid of trying new products because of lack of trustworthy reviews.
Design Opportunities: Enable shoppers to compare products easily
Checkout queues are frustrating
Both self & staff checkout queues take up shoppers’ precious time and have other interaction-limitations.
Design Opportunities: Enable users to pack items & checkout without waiting
Conceptualizing Solutions using Low-fi Designs
After hours of brainstorming, we decided to redo the current shopping lists feature in Target mobile app to be collaborative and give customized suggestions to shoppers and extended its capabilities to allow curated navigation around the store by leveraging augmented reality technology.
Concept Testing & Changes Made
1. Critical change: Shoppers don’t use mobile inside the store and scanning products with mobiles would occupy one hand - so we conceptualized the ‘tablet-on-cart’
2. Critical change: Added shopping bags inside carts as we had not considered placing products in carry-bags
3. We removed friends’ reviews because having too many data points could negatively impact shoppers’ immediate decision making
4. We removed support for other shopping stores while making lists because even though it would provide Target with valuable data about products they might not have, the feature might face pushback from being integrated into the ‘Target mobile app’
The Target Smart-shopping Concept
01. Create shopping lists collaboratively
02. Import your shopping list(s) by scanning the QR code on the tablet-on-cart in the store
04. Check product info and compare products
03. Scan product barcode and add it to your cart
05. Check-out directly from the cart when you're done shopping
User Flows & High-fi Design
Design Limitations
1. Cart redesign - adding tablets & shopping-bags will be expensive
2. Scanning barcodes is a hassle for shoppers
3. Users must use cart to enjoy the new smart shopping experience
Reflection
During the project, we were exposed to real-word constraints and had to think about design from a business point-of-view.
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I conducted a full-fledged user research study, conversed with the team about design directions and communicated concepts to stakeholders.
Lastly, I learned to facilitate immersion of teams in user data, and used it to drive design. If I attempted this project again, I would spend more time evaluating the decisions and concepts early on.