Sustainable Shopping.
Brief
The food system is responsible for a third of global greenhouse gas emissions. How can we make shoppers aware on the climate impact of their food consumption? How do we help them make more informed decisions when food shopping in order to generate lasting behaviour change? Lowering the environmental impact of our food consumption doesn’t require a massive lifestyle change, so how do we support and enable shoppers to do so? As an Interaction Designer, I was given the brief to collaborate with animators and create a mobile experience that would help users understand sustainable shopping a lot clearer.
Problem
We want shoppers to feel empowered and confident that there is an easily accessible and delightful mobile experience to learn about the impact of their food choices and how they can shop more sustainably. It is time consuming to educate yourself in this matter because there is so much to learn/understand about it. A lot of the resources online are quite dense and hard to make sense of. So an additional challenge would be to provide information in an easy and digestible way, aimed to be accessible to all who engage with it.
Understanding The Sustainable Zone
The sustainable zone will be an important role of supporting, educating and raising awareness of sustainable shopping. We want to create an experience which gives users confidence and understanding on why shopping sustainably can have a huge impact on the climate. Users will be able to link the mobile experience with the zone and earn eco spark points which they can use to buy other products in the future. Being able to interact with a feature in store was important from what we gathered in our user research in store.
Day in the Life
User Flow
Wireframing
The Deliverables
As a team we wanted to showcase the mobile experience through a series of advertisements, from our research we noticed M&S don’t promote sustainable shopping enough for customers to realise what they’re doing. We are pleased with the overall outcome of the app experience and the message it gets out to the target audience. The experience has been designed to promote sustainable shopping while also allowing customers to be rewarded for shopping more sustainable. There is still a lot we can develop further when It comes to the user experience of the app and animations.
M&S Commitments & Plans
The main problem users were facing in store was the little detail they knew on what M&S are doing to support sustainable shopping. From our research we found the supermarket were focused on their commitments and plans to shopping more sustainably and we knew it had to be a main feature within the app.
Daily Eco Tips
Users will be able to view daily eco tips within the app which will educate them on how they can shop more sustainable in store and think about their food waste behaviours.
User Profiles
We included a feature within the app where users will be able to interact with friends and other shoppers. Being able to to see each others discussion board activity and commitments. A key feature which supports and promotes the idea of users educating each other on what they’re doing to shop more sustainable.
Sustainable Zone
We already understand the sustainable zone from our demonstration sketch. But we thought it would be important to include a section within the app to explain to users how the app and the zone work together to support, educate and raise awareness on the climate impact of food consumption & food waste.
Questions
Users have the opportunity to learn what M&S are doing to be more sustainable within the food, clothes and packaging sections of the supermarket.
Solution
Sustainable shopping can be a challenge if you’re not sure on what the supermarket is doing to solve the problem. Looking through our primary and market research we realised the best possible solution is to include a sustainable zone within store which links with the mobile app experience. Users will be able to interact with the zone and use the app which provides key information on daily tips and eco points as a reward system for shopping more sustainable. The app will include up to date resources and discussion board for all shoppers to stay up to date with M&S plans. A lot of shoppers we interviewed didn’t feel comfortable using a mobile experience while shopping, which is why it was essential the zone was made part of the user experience.
Promotional Video
After finalising our mockups, we decided to start prototyping all of the screens together and showcase an interactive experience. The prototype allowed us to understand how the user will navigate around the app and if the experience is valuable and accessible for the target audience. Which we then put together a promotional video to demonstrate the mobile and sustainable zone experience by using simple animations throughout the advert.
Future Developments
Although we were pleased with how the prototype flows and works with the user, we know there are a few features that can be added and some tweaks. Working alongside an animation team, I realised there aren’t any animations within the app itself. The app would look more engaging and user friendly if we included animated tutorials to explain the sustainable zone within the app rather than just information. Especially when it comes to considering the target audience age range and how they will navigate through the app. The animation team focused mainly on the concept of the promotional video rather than on the app experience, which in my opinion set us back a little bit in regards to getting key features out to the user. But as a group we found this project quite challenging when it came to building an experience suitable for customers who don’t like to interact on their phones as much.
Next Project.
