Embodied Shopping

Making shopping a learning experience for kids

A grocery toolkit to foster financial responsibility, nutritional awareness, and enhanced decision-making abilities among children.

Flat layout of the pink and navy Embodied Shopping toolkit: a “Let’s go shopping!” instruction sheet, grocery and budget lists, paper currency, and piggy-bank and wallet pouches

My Role

UX Researcher

Duration

8 weeks

Design Tools

1. Figma
2. Photoshop

R&D Methods

1. Observations
2. Physical Prototype
‍3. Usability Testing

We went observing at Walmart

As a part of our course project, we were tasked with optimizing the grocery shopping experience. We started off by visiting Walmart and observing shopping behaviors.

We observed:

customers (e.g. families, elderly, students' groups, individual shoppers)
employees (e.g. cashiers, warehouse workers)
store locations (e.g. check-out, section layouts, product placements)

Kids influence shopping behaviors

After reflecting on our observations and brainstorming amongst each other, we decided to center our solution around kids who go for shopping with their parents because:

Children influence shopping decisions; they hold a purchase power within the family.
Western families are categorized as negotiation families where children have a greater sense of autonomy.
Tech-solutions are not suitable for children because they tend to interact more with their surroundings during shopping.

We went observing children at Walmart

A parent and two children walking down a Walmart aisle lined with household goods

Two children and an adult watching a video-game display next to the book section of a Walmart

Two children sitting on the floor playing with toys in a Walmart toy aisle while two adults browse the shelves

Having narrowed down our user base, we went to Walmart again. This time, we shadowed around 30 families with kids to gather insights.

We found that:

Younger children need to be distracted. They throw tantrums while making demands to buy products.
Children aged 4-7 are energetic. They are eager to observe/ touch items but may become annoying at times too.
Children aged 7-12 help their parents with shopping. They discuss what to buy, fetch items, search for products, and read information on them.

Shopping can be educational for 7–12 year-olds

We noticed grocery shopping could be a valuable source of cognitive development among children aged between 7-12 years since they take interest in shopping and actively participate in the experience with their parents.

To get a better sense of our user needs and pain points, we developed a user persona of 7-12 year olds based off our observations and field interviews with children and families.

“Meet Jess!” persona for a 10-year-old from Lafayette, Indiana: background, attitudes, aspirations, parental influence, personality, tech proficiency, and hobbies

After having an understanding of our target user, we decided to build a toolkit for the 7-12 year olds which they can use while shopping. We performed Crazy-4 ideation to identify core cognitive development competencies that could be incorporated in our grocery toolkit. We chose to focus on:

Financial responsibility
Nutritional awareness
Decision-making

We started sketching ideas for grocery toolkit

Concept slide for Financial Responsibility: sketches of grocery lists, budget sheets and a piggy bank beside a note on Cambridge University research about children and money

Concept slide for Nutritional Information: two hand-drawn worksheets for reading food labels and comparing fruits and vegetables

Concept slide for Decision-making: small hand-drawn sketches of store maps and decision trees, with text about problem solving and communication between parents and children

Step by step guide to using the grocery toolkit

Step 1, Budget Planning: annotated layout of the grocery list, priority stickers, paper currency, wallet and savings pocket

Step 2, Store Layout Navigation: a simplified colored store map with departments such as Toys, Home, Garden, Health and Checkout

Step 3, Product Information Review: a worksheet explaining the nutrition facts label, nutrients, expiry dates and unit prices

Step 4, Gamified Produce Selection: a flow chart for picking a fresh apple by checking its color, texture and firmness, with check marks and crosses

Step 5, Family Reflection: a mini-game board where the child and the parent place “Me” and “Mom/Dad” stickers on fresh fruit, with the rules beside it

We asked kids how they felt about the kit

We approached 2 children with families at Walmart and shadowed them while they used our grocery toolkit. We found that:

The store layout map (Step 2) was not comprehensive and the 'Know your product' sheet (Step 3) was too text-heavy for skimming.
The 'Know your product' (Step 3) sparked a conversation between parents and the child about nutritional value of products.
The gamified decision tree (Step 4) helped children identify fresh produce items.

After the qualitative interview, we asked participants to provide feedback about their experience on the evaluation sheet.

Evaluation questionnaire titled “Was grocery shopping fun?” with emoji rating scales, a checklist of favorite kit activities, and open questions about what the child learned

Reflection

This was my first project where I extensively performed ethnographic observations and conducted shadowing exercises. This was also the first time I worked with children. The design choices in the toolkit's layout were carefully thought-out. For instance, we incorporated avatars and playful interactions to make the toolkit look fun to the kids. Moreover, we used emojis to signify the likert scale ratings, which made the questions more understandable for the children.

The physical prototype of the toolkit was designed in such a way that it could carry the toolkit components in a compact format. To do this, we incorporated pockets inside the folds.