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Kroger Case Study - Augmented Reality Nutrition Feature
DESCRIPTION
Augmented Reality feature that allows shoppers to view the nutrition and dietary scores of individual products based on personal preferences made within the app.
This was an attempt at a rapid case study (24 hours) to wow my interviewers at Kroger so I had to take liberties with the amount of research and design I could do within the time frame.
ROLE
Role: Product Designer | Researcher
Tasks: UX Design, Visual Design, User Research
Timeline: ehhhhhh 1.5 days (?)
PROBLEM
User < > Business Objectives
Kroger is an empathy led brand and there are few things more personal than individual diets and restrictions. This was an exercise to meld shoppers' goals of buying food that is right for their needs with the overall business objective of boosting sales and improving customer satisfaction and loyalty.
INITIAL USER RESEARCH & CONSTRAINTS
Due to time constraints, I wasn't able to conduct primary research and had to rely on existing, secondary research - specifically UX case studies* that already contained the research I needed for this topic.
* Case Studies and Research Articles will be linked at the bottom of this page.
My "Would-Be" Research and Testing Timeline:
Step 1: Understand the space we're in - food, nutrition, diet. Focus on the pain points of those in the health and wellness space, specifically individuals with dietary restrictions, allergies, and/or unique health goals. Also understand the brand, Kroger and initiatives it's taken within this space.
Step 2: Gather information about shopper habits (both in store and in-app), especially focusing on shoppers with specific dietary restrictions and/or health goals.​
Step 3: Conduct competitive research - look at grocery apps like HEB, Randalls, and Walmart. Also conduct research on health and diet apps like Allergy Eats, Fig, and ShopWell.
Step 4: Send out screener surveys to find shoppers who matched the following criteria:
- Health conscious shoppers
- Shoppers with allergies or diet restrictions
Step 5: Interview select participants
Step 6: Sort and cluster findings in an Affinity Map.
Step 7: Create Personas
Step 8: Brainstorm solutions -> Wireframe -> Prototype -> Test* -> Iterate
Iterative Testing* = Usability Testing and A/B Testing
Longterm Testing* = Clickstream Tracking and Heatmap Analysis, Funnel Analysis and Page Tracking
Some findings based on Ori Statlender & team's research:
Stats
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Researchers estimate that up to 15 million Americans have food allergies, including 5.9 million children under age 18. That’s 1 in 13 children, or roughly two in every classroom.
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Every three minutes, a food allergy reaction sends someone to the emergency room.
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The Centers for Disease Control & Prevention reports that the prevalence of food allergy in children increased by 50 percent between 1997 and 2011.
nterview Findings
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“If I eat a bagel one day, I’m sick for 3.”
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“If I eat the wrong food it will make me feel so bad I won’t leave my bed all day.”
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“I’m constantly Googling ‘Does so-and-so have Gluten in it?’ while I shop.”
Affinity Mapping Patterns
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I typically use my smartphone while I shop.
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I find it extremely important to know the ingredients of the food I buy.
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I sometimes get confused by the labels.
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I constantly look at the food labels.
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I shop wherever and whenever is most convenient for me.
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I get frustrated when I buy something I can’t eat.
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I have a hard time finding food I can eat.
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I see differences in labelling between different regions.
PERSONAS
Nathan's Shopping Experience
This feature has the ability to touch a wide variety of users but in this case, I want to focus on Nathan. Nathan is modeled after the everyday working father who is trying to provide for his family and discovers his child has several severe food allergies. Balancing home and work is a challenge and Nathan is looking for a solution to help ease the sometimes long and cumbersome load of grocery shopping.
Veda Gottumukkala is an Austin based Product Designer formerly at Comcast and Starz. Currently looking for new opportunities.
JOURNEY MAPPING
Nathan's Journey
I wanted to create a visualization where we could study what Nathan's pain points and opportunities may be. My goal was to understand his journey from discovery to purchase.
CONSTRAINTS AND ASSUMPTIONS
Assumption: The backend logic to make dietary recommendations exists due to...
1. Sign Up/Onboarding Personalization via Product Preferences
When signing up for an account, the user is prompted to select types of products they would like to avoid and diets they're interested in. There is also copy on the page suggesting the selected preferences will enhance the users' site and shopping experience which leads me to believe that the choices the users make during this step have direct impact on the products they see advertised to them on the app/site.
2. OptUP Nutrition Rating
According to the Kroger website, the OptUP Nutrition Rating is calculated using machine learning, data science, and nutrition information for each individual product as shown below.
3. Items Details & Nutrition Badges
When viewing the product details page for an item, users are able to see individual ingredients listed out, allergen information, and even a badge indicating the status of some items (Kosher, Non-GMO, Gluten Free).
Given these three reasons, I believe there is existing logic that can read ingredients listed for each product as individual data points and then rate items and make dietary recommendations.
SOLUTION
Enhance Nathan's in-store shopping experience by prioritizing his individual dietary needs and goals through personalization.
Continue to allow Nathan to customize his preferences and respond with personalized data to help him choose products better suited to his and his family's lifestyles. The best part is this could potentially be built on top of Kroger's existing digital infrastructure - the barcode scanning feature and machine learning logic.
Solution: Augmented Reality Nutrition Labels
Original Scanning Feature
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Enhanced AR Scanning Flow
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1. Nathan sets his dietary preferences in the Kroger app.
2. The addition of a toggle at the top right corner of the screen allows Nathan to slide back and forth from each view.
3. Nathan toggles to the AR Scan feature and scans the barcode of the item.
4. His screen is then populated with the item along with the OptUp Nutrition checklist based on his preferences from Step 1.
5. He can swipe up to see options that may be scoring higher for his needs than the current product.
MVP Focus
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When asked to customize dietary preferences, users can choose which ingredients they would like to avoid and which diets they're interested in. Reading a list of ingredients against a database is a lower lift than personalizing recommendations to diets.
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MVP+ (Ordered by effort estimations and dependencies)
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Allowing users to edit dietary preferences on the scanning page
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Based on the existing research, users want the ability to change their preferences on the scan page rather than navigating back to My Account.
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Personalized recommendations based on diets users are interested in
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The logic to build out this feature is similar to what I am suggesting with the MVP but would use larger pools of data.
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Individualized Scores​​​
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Last​ly, we can create a dynamic OptUp Nutrition Score based on the above data and users' personal preferences. This can be used to advertise products on the website or app that would more likely be purchased by the individual consumer.
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BACKEND WORKINGS
Between Steps 3 & 4 of the above Scanning Flow, a script is run comparing the individual ingredients against a database to populate whether or not an item falls into a specific dietary category.
Otherwise...
1. Each ingredient would have to be input into the system as an individual data point
2. An ingredient may have many variations of its name so the database will have to store each main ingredient as an entity with multiple variations. This cycle will need to be done with every ingredient listed.
SO WHAT DID I LEARN & NEXT STEPS
Good Design is Good Business
It's always an exciting challenge balancing user and business objectives but what I've come to realize is, in the words of Laura Klein, "It’s a mistake to think about business objectives and user objectives in antagonistic terms." The way to achieve business goals is to make those goals relevant and easy for the users to achieve...often cultivating a symbiosis between both parties.
Sometimes in the hurry of life, we forget that each of us are living our own. When running a business, we sometimes forget the people on the other end are just that - people too. Activities such as grocery shopping may seem so silly and trivial to some but that fails to be the case for so many and with a feature like this, we are giving users a sense of freedom and ease and potentially lifting a very heavy load off their backs. We have to see customers as more than just consumers. We must understand the root of what drives them and meeting those needs is the key to establishing brand loyalty.
Research & Case Studies:
https://thetakeout.com/sifter-app-easy-grocery-shopping-with-food-allergies-1849774378
https://xtalks.com/consumer-app-food-allergies/
https://marinov.to/allergies-tracker-ios-app-design/
https://www.allergicliving.com/2021/08/05/food-ordering-app-that-meets-allergic-students-needs/
https://uxdesign.cc/food-allergies-when-search-ux-becomes-dangerous-12d4302aa6dd
https://medium.com/@oristatdesign/safe-foods-app-f3f21a19efdb
https://www.verywellhealth.com/food-allergy-apps-to-help-keep-you-safe-1324320
https://www.verywellhealth.com/grocery-shopping-for-people-with-food-allergies-1324327
Thanks for sticking around till the end and hope you enjoyed this case study. If you have comments, feedback, or just want to know how the hell to pronounce my last name, feel free to reach out to me at veda.gottumukkala@gmail.com. Cheers!
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