SmartEats by Giant Eagle
User Research, UX Design, Business Research, Artificial Intelligence
Duration
7 Weeks
Role
User Research and UX Design
Tools
Figma, User Interviews, Field Studies, Storyboarding, Presentations
SmartEats is an intelligent grocery feature designed for Giant Eagle groceries. By notifying shoppers of meals they can cook using the ingredients they have at home, Giant Eagle can help them save money, and reduce food waste, offering customers a convenient way to prepare their next meal.
For
Giant Eagle Grocery Chain
With
Nava Babaei – Project Manager
Wanting Yang
Victor Wang
Save Money, Reduce Waste,
Shop Smarter
SmartEats is an meal planning solution integrated directly into the Giant Eagle app, anticipating user needs by replenishing weekly orders. Giant Eagle can decrease competitors’ advantages mid-week by increasing the amount of “little shops” in-person and through the app, elevating overall revenue and brand loyalty.
Overview
Conducting & Visualizing Research
Working with the team we conducted a series of studies to identify gaps in the existing service. From there we developed and tested various service ideas, understanding where shopper’s priorities are, and how we can increase the value proposition of each idea. I worked on translating these findings into various diagrams to show our clients.
My Role
Why do we need this service?
Our Client
An ever evolving business model
Giant Eagle is a grocery an American supermarket chain with stores in Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, Indiana, and Maryland. They’ve experimented a lot with different ways of expanding their business which has now developed into Giant Eagle Market District, Giant Eagle Express, standalone pharmacies, GetGo their 24/7 gas stations/convenience stores, and WetGo their own car wash. Their next goal: A meal service for Giant Eagle customers.
The Problem Space
Increasing “little-shops”
To understand the problem space you need to understand some the language used throughout. As we talked to Giant Eagle we started to pick up some of their grocery store lingo– "big shops” are those days when you go to the grocery store to pick up all your food for the next week or two. “Little shops” are those trips you make in-between because you ran out of eggs, or you just need one more tomato to make this recipe. Giant Eagle is confident about getting their customers in and providing them what they need for their big shops, but feels they still have room to grow with their little shops.
Project Goals
What is the best way to create on-the-go meal solutions for their customers?
How might we convince customers to make their “little-shops” at Giant Eagle?
How might we increase customer engagement with
their app?
Timely notifications to get you food as soon as you need it
Start planning for your meal before the first pangs of hunger set in. Set timely reminders on your phone to remind you of your recent grocery trip contents and any reminders to pick up ingredients after work.
Key Feature 1
Creating a personalized weekly meal plan
for you
Lock in your favorite recipes and quickly see what ingredients you are missing and immediately add them to your cart.
Key Feature 2
Meals tailored to your tastes
Get recipe recommendations based on what you have purchased in the past. Keep swapping out recipes until you find one you like, and works with your current pantry.
Key Feature 3
Nudging your weekly shops
Get reminders for the ingredients you love, but buy infrequently or in bulk. Never forget you bananas again.
Key Feature 4
What brings customers to Giant Eagle?
Given Giant Eagle’s interest in creating a meal solution, we were interested in exploring how to increase more little shops and how to integrate giant eagle within the daily meal decision experience. We set out to the storefronts to interview shoppers and study the landscape. We also completed a lot of desk research looking into academia about decision making as well as competitive research analyzing other applications in comparison to the Giant Eagle app.
Discovery & Initial Research
Understanding the value proposition of
Giant Eagle
We created a persona based off of what we thought the ideal target audience would be, and we chose the parent of a family because they’re going to be the most likely to not have time or the energy to worry about what they should eat until the last minute, while also being likely to want to save money.
Consolidating the Research
Understanding how the service fits together
Since Giant Eagle wants to increase engagement with their app, we mapped out the current user journey of purchasing groceries. This way it was easier for us to visualize both when and where different interventions can take place.
Creating a Service Blueprint
Market Research
Personas
User Interviews
Journey Mapping
Creating a meal service for busy families
We created a persona based off of what we thought the ideal target audience would be, and we chose the parent of a family because they’re going to be the most likely to not have time or the energy to worry about what they should eat until the last minute, while also being likely to want to save money.
Defining a Target User Group
A missing ingredient delivery or
Pickup service
Early Iterations
Prioritizing Early Notifications
Timely after work notification system
Based on the service blueprint we recognized that the best time to create an intervention would be during the preparation stage. Since we are targeting families, we decided to test a notification system that would give a recipe recommendation at around 6PM. These recipes would be based on what the customer ordered last time they were in Giant Eagle. Any missing ingredients could be ordered through the Giant Eagle app, and delivered right away.
Recognizing Logistical Constraints
The $35 Fee Challenge
Our proposed business model, realistically, is not profitable enough for Giant Eagle. We were encouraging people to buy the 1-2 missing ingredients to finish complete a recipe, which could cost around $10 to $20, but nowhere near the $35 minimum needed for deliveries and pickup.
Further Explorations
Developments and Further Research
As a team we thought there was potential with the notification idea, but we needed to rethink what the prompt would be for customers. To better understand what goes through a customer’s mind before grocery shopping and cooking we sketched out 5 different storyboards each testing a different facet of our idea. Some ideas were ordering groceries for others, a collaborative weekly grocery list and more.
Pivots
An even earlier notification system
One of the key themes that we noticed through our interviews was that people usually think about their meals before they even get off work, sometimes even the day (or days!) before. Our proposed notification system would happen too late if it rings at 6PM.
The second point that came up was that 2) people often buy the same things at grocery stores, which means that it’s easy to build up grocery lists or carts through the Giant Eagle app with the customer’s weekly favorites.
The last point is that decision making is often one of the most difficult parts of deciding what to eat. It’s a game of mix-and-match of what you want to cook, what ingredients you have, and what you ultimately can cook.
Next steps
Design our next iteration of the prototype: in-app digital flows on Figma
Shift design to cater towards medium-shops to meet the order threshold
Integrate the shopping list to continue supporting little-shops
Differentiate between ingredients that you don’t have from what you
do have
a Weekly meal planning service
SmartEats is a smart meal planning service designed to help customers maximize the potential of their groceries. A weekly meal planner is integrated into the Giant Eagle app, helping customers easily identify recipes they can make with their current groceries, as well as what ingredients they are missing for tomorrow’s dinner.
Final Pitch
Timely Notifications
It helps to start thinking about your meals earlier in the day, and earlier in the week. SmartEats will send you notifications during the lulls of your day to make sure you’re eating the best you can be.
Notifications
Toggle Views
Lock in and Visualize Your Week
It helps to start thinking about your meals earlier in the day, and earlier in the week. SmartEats will send you notifications during the lulls of your day to make sure you’re eating the best you can be.
Recipe Recommendations
Tailored to Your Tastes
One of the most tiring parts of cooking is figuring out what to eat. Recipes are recommended based on the type of groceries you tend to buy, and previous recipes you have tried cooking. If you are recommended a meal you don’t like or don’t feel like cooking, you can easily swap it out.
Cart Recommendations
Nudging Your Weekly Shops
There are some foods that you are constantly refilling. SmartEats will give you little nudges in your cart, so you’ll never have that moment where you realize you forgot to add your favorite snack to the cart.
Final Reflections
Designing for multiple parties is hard
Throughout this project we had a constant back and forth on what we wanted this new service for Giant Eagle to look like. What do we need to do for this service to benefit Giant Eagle, and for customers to recognize that benefit as one significant enough for them to change a part of their lives? The final solution needed to be something easy enough for both Giant Eagle the business, and Giant Eagle the shopper to adopt. We ended up talking to a lot of people, investigating different services, and recognizing current workarounds all throughout the process of building our own service.
Turn problems into opportunities
The initial problem space Giant Eagle gave us we thought was pretty tight, however the more we researched and the more we sketched through different ideas the broader we realized the opportunities were. There were so many different ways to encourage people to shop, and just by changing one variable could have huge impacts on customer’s perceptions.
To the people who helped
I’d like to extend my gratitude to Raelin and Denise for providing us insightful feedback for our work, and for all the exercises in-class to really help push our ideas. This project has been formative in helping me figure out my workflow, and understanding how my work fits into the larger business.
Talk to the customers
The main caveat with this point is talking to users with a plan. Each time we talked to a customer we needed to understand what we hoped to get out of this session. If we were doing an exploratory probe, our interview questions needed to be more broad. If we were concept testing we needed some way to help the interviewees visualize/interact with said concept. By doing this each time we were able to piece together information to form a story of what our customers really needs.
Acknowledgements
To the best team
To Nava for being an amazing Project Manager, I feel like I learned a lot from you even just by watching how you work. To Wanting, the creator behind the most adorable sketches you really helped this project come together. To Victor, for being my comrade in arms and doing field research together. This was my first time really translating all the UX skills that I’ve learned (research, prototyping, storyboarding etc) into a client project, and I’m grateful that you guys were there so I could keep asking questions.