Finding Home in the Grocery Store
Daphne Hsu, Shreya Jayaraman, Ryan Liang, and Kris Wong
Problem and Solution Overview
Cuisine is a defining aspect of human culture. (Koc & Welsh, 2002) In our project, we are addressing disparities in the access to cultural groceries faced by the over 67,000 members of the Vietnamese community residing in the Puget Sound area. While some Vietnamese cultural ingredients such as fish sauce, shrimp paste, and MSG can be found at common grocery stores, they are frequently out of stock or unreasonably priced. Additionally, certain ingredients may not have direct English translations, making them even more difficult to find. These customers tend to turn to cultural grocery stores, but cultural grocery store employees often don’t speak the same language as their customers so translating ingredients can be another hurdle for them to jump through while grocery shopping. To help combat this disparity, our team has proposed a solution in the form of a grocery store kiosk that can help customers compare prices between brands, find substitute ingredients for cultural dishes at a cheaper price, and assist in overcoming the language barrier between our users and grocery store employees.
Design Research Goals, Stakeholders, and Participants
After determining our target group and the broad scope of the disparity we wanted to target (specifically, the Vietnamese population of the Puget Sound and the disparities that impair their access to cultural groceries), our team had to narrow down the scope. To do this, we needed to engage and learn from our target population in order to identify tangible problems facing the population. To do this, we decided to use surveys to identify broad trends in issues faced by the target group. This was complemented by more focused interviews that allowed us to use follow-up questions to better understand the significance of the issues faced, the way they affect individuals in our target community and the way information flows work.
Surveys allowed us to access a larger number of people under the time constraints of this project and enabled us to gain insight into broader patterns of user behavior. This survey was distributed through social media forums such as local subreddits populated by our target group. The collected responses provided a springboard for us to identify room for improvement in the existing grocery purchasing system that we could focus on. These quantitative results also provided us with particular insights into trends that helped us ask more specific and probing interview questions.
Through interviews, we were able to develop a better understanding of the problem and disparity that the Vietnamese community faces, including particular aspects of the experience of the diaspora in the Puget Sound area through first-hand accounts of the grocery shopping activity. Interviews were very useful for learning about our target population because the actual context of grocery shopping did not matter as much to us as the user’s thought process in approaching the activity, making its self-reported nature suitable for our aims. During the interview process, we explored questions about the thought process behind finding places to shop, deciding where to go between available options, and the difficulties faced in acquiring certain groceries. We interviewed five participants (three Vietnamese students, a Chinese-American adult, and a Vietnamese-Chinese adult) who purchase Vietnamese groceries regularly. All interviews were conducted over Zoom.
Design Research Results and Themes
Our user research provided us with many revelations about specific problems that the Vietnamese community has with regards to the accessibility of culturally relevant groceries in the Puget Sound.
We learned that too much choice and a lack of marketing presence of the brands of certain products can slow down or otherwise affect the decision making process involved in buying a product. For instance, certain condiments such as fish sauce that are integral to Vietnamese cuisine are available from a very wide variety of brands. These condiments are often similarly packaged, priced and located in grocery stores. Consumers find it difficult to be aware of any differences in quality and other characteristics and make an arbitrary choice that may not be the best possible one.
Another theme that came up during our interviews was related to communication difficulties. Due to the lack of Vietnamese grocery stores to choose from, our research group often fell back on the option of Asian grocery stores. At these stores, store employees may speak different Asian languages and may not speak English fluently. This makes it difficult to ask employees for assistance in stores.
Finally, we identified the absence of balance between necessity and convenience as a theme that significantly impacts our intended user group. One common example interview participants mentioned was the lack of organization and crowding of the Vietnamese and Asian grocery stores that they go to. Since grocery shopping is an activity that people tend to want to do within a certain limited time frame, participants mentioned that they would not even try to look for new grocery items in the store to avoid the inconvenience.
Similarly, participants noted that they simply needed the food, and without much choice of grocery stores to go to, they could not focus on the availability of sales or coupons for their purchases. This lack of choice also shows up in the presence of grocery stores itself. Participants from both urban and suburban areas noted that they generally needed to travel to metropolitan areas for their grocery shopping. These stores also tend to be more crowded, especially during peak hours or weekends, since they need to accommodate demand from all Asian ethnic groups. Since they are already forced to travel long distances and spend time navigating crowded grocery stores, participants seemed to find it a bother to even consider looking for new groceries or consider trying to find ways to save money, even if they would like to.
Proposed Design
Based on the results of our user research, the design idea we intend to pursue is a grocery store kiosk situated at various points throughout Vietnamese or cultural grocery stores that carry Vietnamese food. The kiosk will aid customers with the grocery shopping experience. We chose this particular design for multiple reasons. Firstly, we noticed that there are certain barriers to using other design options, such as a mobile application or a smart refrigerator, that do not exist in the case of a kiosk, such as availability or cost. Also, a kiosk is a more accessible option for people who do not own smartphones. This is more likely to be the case for the elderly and for lower-income individuals. This makes the kiosk the design choice that is most inclusive of more people in our target group.
Moreover, the kiosk is available for instant access and use by anyone at the store it is situated at. The platform does not require users to download an application prior to going to a store. This is especially beneficial because grocery shopping is not a high-frequency activity. Our user research showed that 1–2x a week is the typical frequency of grocery shopping, so users would likely find an on-site tool more convenient. Finally, one of the end goals of all the tasks we have chosen based on our user research is to assist in decreasing crowding in a store by making movement through a store more rapid. A kiosk is the best design for this purpose because it is accessible to all customers at a grocery store and can create a cooperative efficiency.
The storyboard in Figure 1 illustrates how the kiosk may aid a user whose desired ingredient is out of stock at a grocery store. After searching the ingredient, the kiosk provides substitution ingredients that allows the user to make an educated purchasing decision instead of leaving the store empty-handed.
Figure 2 is a storyboard describing the kiosk’s functionality in aiding the communication between customers and employees when a language barrier exists.
Citations
Koc, M., & Welsh, J. (2002). Food, Foodways and Immigrant Experience. Retrieved January 15, 2021, from https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Mustafa_Koc2/publication/253449347_Food_Foodways_and_Immigrant_Experience/links/0a85e52fe76e2cff51000000/Food-Foodways-and-Immigrant-Experience.pdf
