SmartEats
Details
Timeline
January 2024 - May 2024
Role
UX & Service Designer working with 3 other designers
Responsibility
I conducted research, ideated, created flows, and designed screens for the final product.
Problem
Giant Eagle has a presence in the world of meal solutions (meal kits, prepared food, etc.), but wants to understand how they might utilize their existing capabilities to compete with the big players in this space. How might we find success among our customers, and even potentially disrupt this industry?
Solution
Save personalized, suggested weekly meal plans using already purchased ingredients at home, with reminders of money and food waste saved.
Schedule delivery of missing ingredients to complete recipes, fresh and straight to your doorstep
Notify shoppers of meals, recipes, and remind them of their benefits
Context
Giant Eagle is looking for ways to improve their revenue in this area. Their problem was very open-ended, but they did identify some potential considerations/areas of improvement for us to get started:
Increasing online grocery purchases
Opportunity to grow curbside pickup and delivery
Increase smaller basket sizes and purchases
Connecting the in-person and online shopping experience to grow the app user base
Research
To build a foundation and uncover areas of improvement, we conducted experiential research, guerilla research, competitive analysis, and interviews with 8 shoppers at both Giant Eagle and competing grocery stores, uncovering shopping habits, blockers, and pain points.
Small Purchases are Expensive
The app requires an order minimum of $35, which acts as a roadblock to becoming a solution for customers’ mid-week little shops.
Ingredient to Recipe Gap
There's a missed opportunity to guide users from “what do I need?” to “what can I make?” by suggesting recipes during grocery list creation—particularly when meal ideas are unclear.
One Stop Shop
Shoppers don't have the time to go into the store mid-week for small items, they buy everything they need for the week on one day.
The Family Dinner Dilemma
Giant Eagle offers a range of takeout meals, but a majority are for individual meals. This contrasts with the older demographic observed in stores, who are more likely to have other people to feed. Additionally, planning out what to cook and eat for these families for the week can be a struggle.
Through our research, we reframed our problem statement:
How might we…
integrate online grocery shopping into the busy lives of shoppers by giving them compelling reasons to do so —like saving time, money, and effort?
What does SmartEats do?
Giant Eagle obtains valuable data through their rewards program, myPerks. Given that they know what a customer has bought in a grocery trip.
By looking at purchase data to suggest personalized meal ideas in the app based on what customers have already bought, while recommending missing ingredients for delivery to complete the recipes.
Where does SmartEats come into play?
Taking a broader look, we mapped out how and where SmartEats would come into play and how it would affect the process of purchasing ingredients for delivery.
As shown above, the current process for ordering grocery delivery is quite tedious and complicated. With SmartEats, the process is much more simple and concise, especially on the shopper's side.
What's in it for shoppers?
Save time and effort. Save a trip to the store and get missing ingredients delivered while you prep the rest.
Reduce decision fatigue. Providing solutions at the point of indecisiveness and hunger alleviates emotional distress.
Prevent food waste. Notify shoppers what they could cook with previous purchases before they go bad.
Save money. Remind and encourage shoppers that cooking costs less than eating out.
What's in it for Giant Eagle?
Increased app usage. Solving the meal decision making process for customers and providing easy delivery of ingredients on the app makes them use it more.
Cooking more = buying more. Efficient grocery use encourages more frequent shopping.
Increased brand loyalty. Encouraging cooking keeps shoppers buying from Giant Eagle and away from competitors.
Improvements
Scheduled Delivery
Our design before only allowed for purchase for immediate delivery. We learned that as shoppers planned their meals out for the week, they also wanted to have their ingredients scheduled so that they could forget about it and have it delivered right before cooking for optimal freshness.
Before
After
Adding Shoppers' Taste Preferences
Recommended recipes are useful based off of shopping history, but shoppers thought it could be improved by tailoring it to users’ tastes and preferences as well.
Before
After
Savings and Waste Reminder
A notification recommending a specific recipe might not be enough for people to choose to cook, but showing food waste and saving specific amount of money helps overcome that motivation barrier.
Before
After
Metrics
If we had access to/had enough time to work with the Giant Eagle team to implement this feature, I would have loved to see:
Change in number of monthly Giant Eagle app users
Revenue generated from item delivery
Change in number of purchases
Change in number of people cooking (tracked by completion of recipes from item delivery)
Reflections/What I Learned
Service Design focuses on both the customer and service provider. When designing for services, both the customer and the service provider must benefit - both are needed to co-create value.
Non-linear Design Process. Although our design process for this project was quite linear, I understand that it's quite rare. Most design processes, especially in the real world, are much more messy and require going back and iterating through research, testing, and prototyping.
Models, Models, Models. Creating visual models for clients is a crucial and helpful way to ensure that they understand the information you're trying to portray.