2.1. Gathering Project Requirements

Heuristic evaluations explore and expose quantitative and qualitative usability and experience of platforms from our users’ viewpoint.

Two expert heuristic evaluations were completed using popular methodologies including:

• Nielson’s heuristic evaluation checklist (Nielson 1990)
• (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG 2018)
• The design principles, usability and UX goals in Preece, Rogers, and Sharp (2015)
• Steve Krug’s Don’t Make Me Think (Revisited), (Krug 2014)

The reports highlight issues with the existing Tesco grocery shopping app:

• Menus
• Navigation
• Flows
• Accelerators

Artefacts: Two reviews were reported each for the Android and iOS apps:

• Appendix A. Mary’s heuristic review (PDF 6 MB)
• Appendix B. Pat’s heuristic review

Our opportunities include:

• Opportunities to improve the homepage and delivery page clutter and repetition
• Improve Search using a user perspective ontology and mental model in place of the complex data control architecture.
• Improve system status warnings and undoing of actions
• Improve interactions and navigation in general
• Improve product presentation
• Improve performance support (and make it “mobile friendly”)
• Improve our users’ creation, input, and management of lists

Task maps surface our users’ decisions, inputs, and our system’s outputs required to complete discrete tasks.

The maps may reveal unnecessary steps, data roadblocks, and poor navigation. Together with an expert heuristic review, they prove a powerful diagnostic of designs without access to formal design documentation. This makes them ideal for competitor analysis.

Artefacts:

• Appendix C. Task Model plan
• Appendix D. Seven Task Models (PDF 6 MB)

Our opportunities include:

• Identifying nine shopping task models, and where to combine them
• Reassembly of the Menu, Settings, and Profile tasks
• Identifying of where a Back feature is not implemented
• Removing potential process roadblocks

A walk-thru or flow map visualises our users’ progress through a task usually to storyboard our users’ transactions negating repeated runs through the system.

They are ideal within a competitor analysis as access is often only a registration away. 

Our project required only the most basic shopping flow illustrated.

Artefacts:

• Appendix E. The basic find, add, and checkout flow (PDF 4MB)

Our opportunities include:

• Connecting our users’ list making to the shopping experience

The Basic User Journey focuses on our users’ and enterprise’s wants, needs, and tasks and data input, processing and feedback. It is a tool to develop and focus user centered assumptions, identify areas to research, or to plan universal design.

It cannot replace research and can assist where research resources are limited or prohibited. And although not an established tool, it is certainly contemporary, usable, and is proven useful.

Artefacts:

• Appendix F. Tesco Basic User Journey

Opportunities include:

• Understanding our users’ and the enterprise’s wants, needs, tasks, inputs and outputs are and their implications on experience and design.

Used to identify and communicate the personalities and organisations that influence (direct, assist or constrain) a team or project.

They indicate communication lines and may identify a hierarchy of management or influence. A SWOT analysis may help to make sense of them. Where teams, management lines, and vendors may churn, keeping the artefact editable is advised.

As an academic project outside of Tesco’s influence, the stakeholder map was light. It illustrated Tesco shoppers were vital to our research.

Artefacts:

• Appendix G. Stakeholder Map

Opportunities include:

• Identifying where, as a student team, we can bypass or access the Tesco enterprise and their customers.

The SWOT analysis seeks to identify threats and then turn them into opportunities.\

Two informed the project. One for the Tesco mobile app and one for the Student team. SWOT analysis are actionable within a commercial organisation and more illustrative in a student environment.

Artefacts:

• Appendix H. SWOT analysis for each of the Tesco grocery shopping app and the student team

Opportunities include:

• Stores and app are accessible to our team
• Technology available
• Tesco brand
• Powerful resources
• Slow growth in mobile grocery app space, opportunity to improve

While awaiting input to the preliminary research, I made a paper prototype of the Tesco app homepage to reorganise the profile and menu content, and rationalise the homepage content.

The exercise revealed reasons for the disorientation we had felt in the app’s navigation. It also promoted a possible UX “quick-win” for a team reluctant to change.

The method is easy to assemble and makes a great collaborative tool. Small teams may benefit from the method as there is little investment in creating the cards and interdisciplinary communication may be encouraged.

In context, it got me closer to understanding the app’s existing architecture.

Artefact:

• Appendix I. Examining the homepage

The Research Plan is a “living document” in which to list and plan individual research interventions, resources, and artefacts.

The plan is based on our initial research and our developing a Problem Statement. It confirms our research:

• Aims
• Objectives
• Assumptions
• Methods
• Resources

The Research Methods section lists the following for each planned research method and aids the preparation of each intervention:

• Aims
• Strategy
• Equipment
• Participants
• Ethics and Consent

Note: Including Ethics and Consent in the planning document usefully prompted a modification of the prescribed IADT Consent Form to meet the needs of the study.

Artefact:

• Appendix J. Research Plan

To contextualise the real-world shopping app landscape, I researched a Business and Competitor report and a summary of customer reviews (iOS and Android app versions). This resembled a literature review of some qualitative and quantitative data available to the public.

This level of research is open to anyone outside an enterprise. It is essential to understand the contexts in which an app or platform is designed, and operates and to help focus research resources on known unknowns.

There was insufficient time to present key findings and data as “infographics”, which would ease its consumption and better highlight opportunities.

Aretfacts:

• Appendix K. Tesco grocery app reviews
• Appendix L. Business and Competitor Report

Opportunities: The findings and their implications were compiled together with the field research and include:

• Online shopping architectures
• Business advantages of e-commerce
• Online grocery app features
• Trends and competitors
• The emotional connection
• Grocery store layout psychologies
• Tesco shopping app features
• Returns policy
• Driver interaction at delivery

Interviews enable the collection of qualitative and quantitative research data. Unstructured interviews may capture new lines of inquiry and access the emotional domain. Structured interviews are easiest to analyse.

As a team, we agreed to conduct two semi-structured interviews each. While working remotely, Mary wrote the interview script, which passed team review easily. Mary also performed the analysis and segmentation of the returned data to inform two believable personas and scenarios.

Artefacts:

• Appendix M. Interview script
• Appendix N. Mary’s Interview Responses worksheet
• Appendix O. Pat’s interview transcript (participant No.10)
• Appendix P. Unstructured interview transcript (ad-hoc with Tesco delivery staff)

Opportunities:

• Insights into real-world shopping behaviours
• Insights into our users’ environment and preferences
• Insights into our users’ emotional experiences of shopping

Observation and surveys can canvas and collect quantitative and qualitative research data. They can be highly structured or informal, which opens the methods to inexpert researchers, i.e., the whole enterprise/ development team. Both methods may combine with additional methodologies such as interviews, Emoticons, usability studies, and more.

We were encouraged to “door-stop” shoppers as a method of primary field research and report findings the following week. The Research Plan and my research blog post aided the hasty preparation of a Consent Form, printed survey questionnaire, and intervention approach.

No one participated with the printed interception survey. To obtain data, I converted it into a Google Forms Survey, which Mary helped to promote to receive 51 responses within 36-hours and ready to report in class that Tuesday.

I wrote a student reflective report for my own learning account, which included details of caveats, constraints, and opportunities to acquire useful insights into Tesco’s retail practices.

Artefacts:

• Appendix Q. Modified consent form
• Appendix R. Printed survey questionnaire
• Appendix S. Google Forms online survey
• Appendix T. Google Forms online survey results worksheet
• Appendix U. Observation report
• Appendix V. Intercept Survey and Observation Analysis

Opportunities:

• Insights into Tesco’s retail strategies and psychologies
• Insights into real-world shopping behaviours

Karen proposed diary studies to gain a deeper understanding of shopping behaviours. Her report helpfully correlates with earlier observations and assumptions around list making in the context of shopping.

Artefact:

• Appendix W. Karen’s Diary Study Analysis

Opportunities:

• List building activity
• Correlation between food quality, trust, and emotion
• Shoppers experience of healthy options and information
• Use of device sensors
• Budget vs value

Accessibility needs aside, the easiest lists are hand-written.

List apps take more cognitive and motor work: typing, managing, exporting, and using.

To write a grocery shopping list we first determine our wants and then take inventory of our stock.

We then subtract our stock from our wants, which gives us what we need.

The Tesco app is a shopping task and not a list making one.

The app builds a list of exact products in the Trolley following complex cognitive and motor work to identify and add them.

If the list is imported into the shopping task it will take work to identify the exact items to place into the Trolley.

The heavy lifting needs done by the system if making the shopping list in the app according to our users’ own mental models before converting the input into concrete Trolley items is to be attractive to our user.

Problem statement, personas, and scenarios

In class exercises led us to formulate problem statements and stakeholder maps, which were initially ad-hoc and only later developed usefully once the team was able to workshop them.

Problem Statement

“When I need to do grocery shopping, I want to be organised for the week, so I can make delicious meals“

Personas and scenarios

Mary’s exceptional work compiling and segmenting research data into two credible personas led to our team work-shopping and agreeing believable scenarios and Steve, our go to persona.

Artefacts posted by Mary:

• Appendix X. Category mapping
• Appendix Y. Participant grouping
• Appendix Z. Draft personas
• Appendix AA. Persona Anna (JPG)
• Appendix BB. Persona Cian (JPG)

Artefacts from workshop:

• Appendix CC. Affinity board (content by team, produced by Pat)
• Appendix DD. Revised Persona Steve (content by team, produced by Mary)
• Appendix EE. Scenario for Steve (content by team, produced by Mary)
• Appendix FF. Customer Journey Map (design by Karen, content by team, produced by Mary)

From our research, proto-personas, and scenarios, we created an empathy map.

Artefacts:

• Appendix GG. Empathy Map (content by team, reproduced by Pat))

A storyboard communicates the user story to our team. Images and text are popularly combined to increase engagement and improve memory retention (learning). Learning may be further improved using auditory and video channels.

I experimented with and blogged about using an “explainer video” and exported stills from it. As a novice user, there is plenty of scope to improve the outcome using custom graphics and a voiceover. (Read my blog post exploring the video storyboard.)

Artefacts:

• Appendix HH. Storyboard scripting document
• Appendix II. Storyboard (PDF 1.3 MB)
• Appendix JJ. Storyboard (Video)

Mary was very supportive with her feedback and we adopted it as our, “as is” storyboard with a printable storyboard version as backup.

An affinity map or diagram helps gather different ideas, opinions, and problems focused on our proto-personas and their scenarios. 

We brain-stormed, card-sorted, and segmented with sticky notes our personas’:

• habits
• goals
• positives
• pain points

It is a useful tool to reflect upon during design discussions.

Artefact:

• Appendix KK. Tesco Affinity Map (PDF 2 MB)