LOFTER-网易轻博

Partner company: AllofUs

Project overview: This project designed a system for improving the experience of shopping offline. Its outstanding aspect is the user behavior analysis.

Target User: People who used to order much groceries online one time because of their busy work and study.

01 FINAL CONCEPT

02 DESIGN PROCESS

Desk Research

With the development of e-commerce, logistics and distribution have developed rapidly. At the same time, it also puts tremendous pressure on urban traffic, to a certan extent, it also cauyses traffic pollution.

In the desk research, literature review focused on several questions is done. 

Q1 Traditional Business - E-Commerce

Q2 What types of e-commerce are there now? What is the delivery content? classification

Q3 e-commerce process  

Q4 big problem city problem （Pollution/traffic jam.....)

Q5 why the problem is caused ? What is the point that affects e-commerce? User, merchant, distribution relationship benefit network  

User is not at home? The driver is not familiar with the road? Time window (distribution path) ...... 

Q6 We found that most of the above problems occurred in the "last mile problem" (sticker map) 

Q7 Five types of solutions (and the drawbacks of the solution) Product Review Analysis and refinement

Conclusion:

1. Because of the time window, more delivery stops and times are made.

2. Grocery retail ranks the second in E-commerce sales in the UK. In 2016, about 48% consumers shop groceries online in the UK.

3. Home delivery for grocery retail is an opportunity because people buy groceries in a relatively stable frequency.

Field Research

The above pricture explains how the system arrange routes for drivers of Tesco.

The arrangement is based on the time slot of each customer. In the same area, drivers' routes go into different cycles from different direction according to the time slot. They don't wait in a community and just keep moving. They almost don't have repeated routes between communities. This is a little different with what we thought at first. The detailed delivery route inside a community is also the same. So, there can be many drivers pass the same community at different time period in the same trip. Drivers feel that there's no big problem about this route.

Much information about customer' behavior from drivers. The load of deliveries to the central London is abut 200~300 kilograms. People can have up to 2~3 orders a week. Compared with customers live in suburban district, they have about 1~2 orders a month and the load of delivery in a van can have 750 kg in average. The reasons are, they tend to have more family to share and has big houses to store goods. This can be more eco friendly because they don't need to go out by car. But for those who live in the central, because the cheaper price online than stores in the center and fast delivery, and they have no space to store goods, they have higher frequency to order.

The problem is, when the trip goes into the center, it has lower efficiency of van usage and more times of delivery. 

As Jack said in the interview, he thinks the biggest problem about the environ-ment caused by home delivery, is that, when the delivery saver occurred, cheaper and faster deliveries cause more orders in the central of London.

Based on interviews and observation, the above chart is made to compare advantages and disadvantages of both shopping online and offline to users.

What they buy online is usually to be products of big packages. This verifies the range of product previously envisaged.

Therefore, a preliminary design concept is raised that shopping online together with neighbours or roommates to reduce time windows and delivery times.

Preliminary concept

Some of users who used to shopping online have needs to place order with others, but they also have some worries like troubles to communicate with roommates or calculating bills with others. Some users who have the experience of placing orders with others once came cross these problems, too.

Therefore, this inspire us that if we can make a design to help users place order together, solvingsome of these problems, to reduce time windows and nega-tive effects of home delivery.

Some consumers use the shopping cart or riding a bike. There are also food deliverers with high frequency.

This prototype shows how the system works in a community based on a real area.

The blue dots present canteen and red dots present bus tops. Other area is living area. In this community, When there are several users place the order with different time windows, there will be several vans pass through.

As for the take away delivery, according to the datas, the peak period is in the noon and evening. It's point to point based on the community. In this area, there are three orders for take away and the routes can pass the Tesco. Also, when they wait in the canteen for delivery, there are also spare times. 

It is need to think about wether these spare time or receptive routes can be utilized.

However, this concept has several problems:

1. The range of the area near the Tesco is hard to regulate.

2. Take away delivers have different interest background with grocery retails. It is hard to combine different systems.

Concept iteration

A storyboard is made to analyze pain points.

The memory burden is found in our daily life.

When passing the store or shopping in the store, many times users cannot remember all the things they need to buy, sometimes only one or two pieces. When they forget too many times, they tend to buy a lot in one time online to prevent forgetting in the next time.

For groceries, people use them with a low frequency in a day. They have a feeling after use when something is going to run out, but after that moment, they are easy to forget about this. Some users used to record on phone to remind themselves when shopping.

Therefore, the second concept is, finding a way to monitor the use of products. When something is going to run out, records are upload to the phone and users can be reminded in time.

The smart sensor is chosen to monitor force which means the remaining amount can be sensed. When the bottle is put down, the real time condition can be monitored at once and the data can be up loaded to the phone.

When something is running out after use, the pad can give a feedback to user and a corresponding prompt is displayed on the phone. User can also set reminding limit.

Problem:

1. The monitor pad is inconvient to use and has high cost for users.

2. How to give a strong remind to motivate users to enter the shop from the psychological aspect. 

Concept developement

The voice record is a product similar to the speaker connected to the phone. It records the voice in a space and upload to the phone, and ai on the phone can have the feedback to the user through the speaker. Then user can get a shopping list in advance. When the user is using the product, this is the most sensitive moment to the remaining amount. The user has the perception about the time of almost running out instead of been already run out. So, the voice record by user himself based on Ai can also remind in advance.

By showing the bad result when you find there's no enough to use or the exhausted pictures or gif or goods, giving users an urgent motivation.

According to the GPS positioning when the user is 5 meters away from the super market on the way home, there's a reminding message. Through vibration, the purchased products are displayed on the lock screen, reminding the user and showing urgent demand. When the user arrive the shop, he can Click card flip to see the accurate shelf location of the goods in this store, It is convenient for users to quickly find goods and save much time. After he find the goods he want, the user can scan the barcode of the product and pay directly for goods, no need to wait in the queue. The goal is let users feel less trouble to shop offline.

Until this step, the "Memory burden" concept has been transferred to "Pay to Go".

"PaytoGo" is fast finding and buying goods in the store, saving offline shopping time to motivate more people to shop offline. Then the negative effect of shopping offline can be relived.

User can not only use mobile phone to see the map, when they have several  things to buy, they can also connect to the intelligent basket to see the map when shopping. 

They scan the products directly on the basket and pay with the phone in the   end, saving much time to wait in the queue.

Final concept

Reasons:

1. Almost each store has the basket and when users plan to buy several thing, they will see the basket.

2. Using the basket is much faster than using a cart in the store which fits our design goal.

Other points need to consider:

1. How to corporate with stores and control the cost.

2. Is it convenient for users to see when putting the interface on the basket?

An easy test is done by a user.

We firstly let the user get familiar with this store. Then he was told to find the egg. Then he searched in the store for two minutes and didn't find it until  asked the staff for help. Then user was given an indicator of the location of  the cat food and he found it very quickly. He said he felt much clear with the map and this can really save time for him.

The shelves for different types of goods are also recorded. We find that, the  shelves for small product have more floors which can cost more time to find  the specific good. Therefore, this design concept is reasonable and practical.

Further Concept

We can consider about several people buying together in a store. From our  experience, when we want to have a party, several people will shop together  and for saving time, they will spread. In this condition, we don't know what       good have or haven't been picked and where our partners are.  So, we can have the map to see what others buy and where they are, users  can also leave the message to each other instead of using the phone.