Conceptual project that was started about two weeks after the pandemic initially hit. For people who especially couldn’t afford to leave their house, like at-risk people or parents of small children, there wasn’t a chance for them to get basic necessities. For people who were able to go to the grocery store and wanted to help but didn’t know how, they could volunteer to do grocery runs through the app. This app matched people who needed a runner to people who wanted to do a good deed.
With multiple grocery shopping apps on the market, we wanted to figure out the best competitive angle that would separate our app from the others. After making a competitive analysis, we decided that our app needed to be both cheap for the user and accessible with multiple options. Accessibility was our main goal and things like limited food options or multiple fees create a barrier for our user base to enjoy our app.
Our user base of elderly, at risk folk meant that our flow had to be 1. Intuitive and 2. Trustworthy. If we develop an onboarding page that explains the point of the app, we thought that our elderly user base would trust and understand our app easier.
Onboarding - menu - new order - store selection - checkout screen - create an account - delivery time selection - auto-selection of runner - live time update - order delivery confirmation
I gave our prototype to fellow classmates and asked them 20 questions in a 1-on-1 interview while they used the prototype. I found through user testing that the main areas of improvement was that the onboarding screen was a bit too long and that the process to find a runner had mixed reactions.
Originally, our first app had a segment where you got to choose your runner based on local reviews of the volunteer. We wanted to give the user a chance to review their runner for future users but felt that it added maybe too much information and screens to do so.
We felt like this could be changed to a simpler route if we just auto generate a runner for the shopper instead. They would have the ability to decline the generated runner, thus allowing them to still customize their experience in some way.
We were able to create a product that had two different pathways to take depending on the user- if you were a runner or a shopper. Users reported that finding a shopper felt easy, trustworthy, and helpful. They reported they especially liked the ability to place a thank you note, emphasizing the altruistic feeling the app gave during a stressful and uncertain time of the pandemic.
