Month / September 2014

by AndrianaArt

Journal: Module 3

GOALS

  • Added a new competitor, Amazon Fresh home delivered groceries
  • Finish user scenarios and add in a couple more users, either customer/manager/team educator
  • Write out user requirements

ISSUES COVERED & RESPONSES FROM ADVISORS

  • Time to explore the similarities and differences that my target users could have
  • further develop my user personas, add more details
  • consider in-direct competitors like online grocery stores and e-commerce apps with larger inventories

GOALS FOR NEXT WEEK

  • Re-visit my competitive analysis and add new competitors into the matrix
  • Expand and add in my two new users and re-do the User Flows
by AndrianaArt

Use Case Scenarios

Here are some updated Use Case Scenarios for Gather. I want to add at least two more to this list, possibly scenarios that involve a store manager as a user and/or an employee who is looking to educate themselves on new products.

USE CASE #1

Goal: Find where a product is in the store

Primary Actor: Employee (customer indirectly)

Story/Success Scenario: A customer is wandering around a grocery store and cannot find the Orange Flower Water anywhere; it is essential for their recipe tonight. They grab a passing employee(Alex) to ask him where the item is. Alex does not work in the grocery department, has no idea what Orange Flower Water is, and does not know where the item could be located in the store. Instead of leaving the customer for an undetermined amount of time to ask or find that department’s employees, Alex pulls out his iPhone and opens the Gather app. He logs into the app and searches the product in question. He finds Orange Flower Water and clicks on the “view on map” button to open the location of the item on the store map. Alex can now provide the appropriate level of customer service by leading the customer to the correct aisle and can use the Gather app to answer any other customer questions about the product. He has now educated himself about a previously unknown product in the store and will be able to find it more quickly in the future.

Steps/Scope:

    • Alex takes out his device
    • Opens the Gather application
    • Login to the system
    • Alex searches for the item by name
    • He clicks the “view on map” button
    • Map displays and shows where in the store the item is located and then Alex can take the customer to the product

USE CASE #2

Goal: Find out if a product is Vegan

Primary Actor: Employee (customer indirectly)

Story/Success Scenario: Blythe is new to the Grocery department and is still learning the ropes; she is facing an aisle when a customer picks up an item and looks confused. Blythe walks up to customer to offer assistance. The customer is comparing pasta sauces and wants to know if the Amy’s brand Marinara sauce is Vegan. Blythe is new to working at a specialty market and isn’t sure what makes something Vegan or not. She picks up the jar of sauce and pursues the label looking for information about the product, of course there is no useful information on the jar label. Blythe takes out her mobile device and fires up the Gather app. She enters the name of the sauce into the search field, clicks the correct item from the results, and quickly scans at the info card to see if the item has the Vegan color code. The sauce does and Blythe can now confirm with the customer that the item is Vegan and safe for her to use in her recipe tonight.

Steps/Scope:

  • Blythe will take out her device
  • Open the Gather application
  • Login to the system
  • She searches for the product in question by name
  • Blythe glances at the product’s information card and see’s that it is color coded as a Vegan product
  • She can now inform the customer that the product is indeed Vegan

USE CASE #3

Goal: Find out which sourdough bread products in the store are Gluten Free

Primary Actor: Employee (indirectly customer)

Story/Success Scenario: Carlos is an Assistant Team Leader of the Prepared Foods department and is stalking the pre-pack area. A customer approaches him and asks what Gluten Free products the store offers. Carlos is aware that there are a large number of products and is unsure how to answer the question. He asks, what type of product are you looking for? The customer answers that she is looking for Gluten Free sourdough bread. Carlos knows that the bread is located in multiple areas of the store and under two separate departments. Instead of walking the customer to multiple locations in the store, he pulls out his mobile device, and opens up the Gather app. Carlos types in sourdough bread into the the search box and then refines the search by clicking the category Gluten Free. He is presented with a list of 3 Gluten Free sourdough breads the store carries; they are all from the grocery department and located in a cold case. Carlos walks the customer over to that area of the store and is able to find the Gluten Free sourdough breads she was looking for. The customer thanks Carlos, he asks if she needs any further assistance, and then returns to stocking the pre-pack area.

Steps/Scope:

  • Carlos takes out his mobile device and opens the Gather app
  • He logs into the app
  • He searches for sourdough bread
  • Refines his search by clicking on the category “Gluten Free” from the refine menu
  • He is able to see that all of the results are from the same department and located in the same aisle/cold case due to the quick information included the search results
  • Carlos takes the customer over to the cold case where the items are located
by AndrianaArt

Journal: Module 2

GOALS

  • Gather more user profiles & refine use cases
  • Research successful Search User Interfaces and sketch more prototypes

ISSUES COVERED & RESPONSES FROM ADVISORS

  • break down the problems my application solves for users (employees, customers, the store)
  • find more examples of search interfaces that are successful
  • show as much information as possible in a small space for quick glances, how will I do that?

GMO Checker AppI was thinking of having the product information be color coded or use symbols to quickly show major points about a product. I found another app that is doing something similar, it isn’t exactly pretty but it has color coded dots to show which item is Vegan, contains GMOs, etc.

 

GOALS FOR NEXT WEEK

  • spend more time with Lowe’s app and see if there are any more like it
  • get feedback on whether I can use Whole Foods as an example store in my project, and if so get permission to use their trademark
  • continue research on search navigation designs, formats and trends
by AndrianaArt

Journal: Module 1

GOALS

  • re-evaluate and focus project
  • update project abstract and unique positioning statement
  • define deliverables & create module plans for all GDS courses
  • update project timeline

ISSUES COVERED & RESPONSES FROM ADVISORS

  • project scope even without Point of Sale portion is still too large, need to focus my target audience on either employees or customers
  • need to clarify if my project is meant for a specific chain of grocery stores or all of them
  • what main user needs will my app help fulfill?

GOALS FOR NEXT WEEK

  • focus target audience
  • decide on new focus of project, either store tool or customer tool
  • update competitive analysis
  • research search navigation designs, formats and trends
Gather POS Title Image
by AndrianaArt

Feedback from Midpoint Review

Midpoint Results

From this feedback, I have decided what direction I am going with my Thesis project, Gather. I am going to go the Mobile Web Application route, since I want my app to be accessed from any device. Therefore I would assume that I would take DS: Responsive Web over DS: Scripting for Mobile.

Also, I am going to be focusing on the search aspect of my project. I have been researching how to create my own Point of Sale System and I have concluded that it is a bit over my head at this point. I am not a Computer Science major and my knowledge of code isn’t there yet. Like the panel mentioned, I can see myself getting lost in the POS part and not being able to concentrate on the design of the application. Since I am removing the POS portion of the project, I am going to be able to broaden my design, make it responsive and having it fit all sizes of devices. Let me know if you think I am heading in the right direction and if I reined in the scale enough.