minits | GEMASTIK 13 Finalist
In GEMASTIK XIII (2020), my colleagues and I competed against 500+ teams from all over the country in UX Design Competition. We designed an app that helps people shop safely in supermarkets during the pandemic. During the development of this design, we went through three design iterations before concluding with this result below.
P.S.: we ended up getting fourth 😂
Year
2020
Service
Research
Category
Mobile App Design
Tool
Figma, Maze
Introduction
GEMASTIK (National Student Competition in the field of Information, Communication, and Technology) is an annual IT competition where students across Indonesia competed with each other representing their university. I assembled a team of three to compete in UX Design Competition.
The COVID-19 pandemic has really changed how Indonesian (and the rest of the world) do many things, one of which is shopping for their daily needs. Even though there are already many platforms to shop online, most people still prefer to make purchases directly in supermarkets and local traditional markets. Even so, people still feel afraid of being exposed to the virus from COVID-19. The community feels that the existing health protocols have not been fully implemented in supermarkets.
Background
In this COVID-19 pandemic that has been happening in almost every part of the world, Indonesia is no exception. As per October 2020, the total confirmed cases in Indonesia is still rising and hasn't shown any signs of stopping. Based on the data provided by Satgas COVID-19 (2020), the total number of COVID-19 cases in Indonesia has reached 353,461 cases as of 16 October 2020.
Graph of the development of Indonesian COVID-19 Confirmed Cases from Mar 2020 to Oct 2020
The Indonesian government has issued various policies to limit the movement of the public to suppress the spread of the virus (Ministry of Health of the Republic of Indonesia, 2020). Major cities such as Jakarta, Bogor, Bandung, Depok, Tangerang and Bekasi have implemented Large-Scale Social Restrictions (PSBB) for the past five months. Schools, universities, entertainment venues and places of worship have temporarily closed from public use.
The World Health Organization recommends everyone to protect their personal health by washing their hands regularly using soap and running water, wearing a mask, and maintaining a physical distance of at least 1 (one) meter from other people (World Health Organization, 2020).
Community activities are also automatically affected by the restrictions imposed by the government. Activities such as teaching-learning, working, and physical worship have been replaced by applying remote methods. Although the majority of community activities can be carried out at home with the assistance of the internet, household needs such as staples and other fresh products are still needed by every family. Based on data from Google News (2020), the movement of people in Indonesia, especially for retail and recreation stores, has increased since the announcement of the first COVID-19 case in Indonesia on March 2, 2020. Thus, shopping for household needs is unavoidable.
The graph of changes in mobility over time
Although there are various online platforms available for shopping basic necessities, there are still many people who prefer to shop directly in person at supermarkets. According to Tukkinen and Lindqvist (2015), 69.2% of people still do not use online shopping platforms to shop for staples. The motivation of these respondents not to use online shopping platforms is divided into two main groups, namely the Holistic Meal Planner and Memory Extender. The largest group, the Holistic Meal Planner, enjoys the process of finding inspiration for new dishes to cook so they allocate time to choose the best ingredients personally. Meanwhile, the second group, Memory Extender, views the process of selecting food ingredients as an ordinary routine, but still choose to shop in person for additional inspiration while shopping.
As a public facility, supermarkets are one of the windows for the spread of COVID-19. In order to minimize this spread, it is appropriate for every supermarket to implement clear and disciplined precautions. To properly regulate and implement this, the Minister of Trade has also made a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for the Public Market and Modern Retail Health Protocol which was released on May 14, 2020. However, in its implementation, the public still feels that the SOPs being implemented by supermarkets are still not optimal.
Field Study
The initial stage carried out by the research team to understand the situation and the existing problems was to conduct qualitative research in the form of a field study using the direct observation method. The method described by Farrel (2016) is useful for compiling design research into user processes and is also useful for understanding business interactions with users. During the field study, the research team took some documentation of the atmosphere and activities that took place in the field.
Health protocols implemented in Greater Jakarta's supermarkets we observed.
This field study was carried out by the research team in nine supermarkets spread across Jakarta and South Tangerang areas on August 29, 2020. During this activity, the research team tried to record and observe how each supermarket implemented the health protocol SOP issued by the Minister of Trade, Agus Suparmanto. The research team also continues to strive by complying with the implementation of health protocols throughout the whole duration of the field study.
We're using P.O.E.M.S. (People, Objects, Environment, Messages, and Services) to guide the field study. This framework was introduced by Kumar (2013), and is used as a structure for making and summarizing notes during observations and helping to identify correlations and contrasts of observation subjects.
Field study findings guided with POEMS Framework.
Apart from the POEMS Framework, we also observe the implementation of health protocols in every supermarket we visited. We're using the COVID-19 Health Protocol issued by the Ministry of Health as a standard on how the protocol must be implemented. We found that while all supermarkets enforce face mask rule and provide hand sanitizer/washing stations, most of them didn't enforce the maximum of 30% capacity at a time rule.
Survey
Number of respondents: 132
Distribution via Google Form to 2000 people
The instrument used in the survey consisted of two parts: (1) questions related to the demographics of the respondents; and (2) questions related to the research topic. The first section also includes information on how respondents shop for daily needs during the pandemic. Furthermore, the questions in the second section are generated from respondents' answers in how they shop for daily necessities during this pandemic.
From the survey that has been conducted, it is known that a total of 93.9% of respondents still make direct purchases or offline shopping to buy their daily needs during this pandemic. The total is divided into respondents who are still Shopping Offline Only (28.0%) and Shopping both online & offline (65.9%).
How respondents shop daily needs during the pandemic: 65.9% is a mix between offline and online shopping, 28% offline only, 6.1% online only.
The survey also concluded that supermarkets still being the first choice on where respondents shop their daily needs.
Places to shop. Supermarket is still the popular choice, followed by minimarket (like 711), traditional market, Street Vegetable Vendor, and last, roadside stall around the neighbourhood.
Reasons people still shop offline
Top three reasons why respondents still shop offline is:
I want to be able to pick and choose the items directly. (Melihat barang secara langsung)
I enjoy shopping physically in the stores. (Menikmati pengalaman berbelanja secara offline)
I want to get my items fast without waiting for deliveries. (Menghindari proses pengiriman)
We also asked the respondents about the implementation of COVID-19 health protocols, nearly half of the respondents feel that supermarkets doesn't implement it properly.
Graph of the implementation of health protocols in supermarkets. (Red means "Not all supermarket enforce the protocols", Blue means "All supermarket has enforced the protocols"
User Interview
From the field study and the survey, we can conclude that there are two main user groups that we think represents the main visitors in supermarkets. These two main groups also helped us to build user personas for this app.
User Persona
User persona of the app: Young adults and Housewives
Conducting the User Interview
To deepen the understanding of customer motivation, experiences, and difficulties when shopping offline, the research team conducted user interviews with six interviewees who are a mixture of the two main user groups, namely young adults and housewives.
Problems gathered from user interviews
From the data we gathered using previous primary researches, we built a user journey map for visualizing the shopping experience during the pandemic.
Mapping the problems into groups using Affinity Diagram
After mapping the problems into six main groups, we determined the development priorities using prioritization matrix
Ideation
From the problems we stated above, we decided to build two main features for the app. The first feature is to build a one-stop information pool for user to check if their chosen supermarket is the safe place to shop. The data for each supermarket is crowdsourced to prevent biased and outdated data. Users can submit crowd-level data, health protocol implementation, and queue wait times. These data will be collected anonymously to minimize privacy concerns and will be computed. The calculation will be displayed in relative terms rather than absolute terms because using relative terms is easier to be understood by most users.
The second feature is to build a platform that can help users to avoid physical contact while still getting their groceries immediately.
Information Architecture
Crazy Eight
After confirming the information architecture, we then brainstormed using the Crazy Eight framework to bring out the (crazy) ideas on what would the interface look like.
Images on the first row is sketches for the first feature, and the second row is for the second feature. These sketches are also used for the base thinking when we constructing the user and task flow.
User & Task Flow
There are four main flows in Minits:
Design
Wireflow
To illustrate on how the app will look like based on the user flow and sketches from crazy eight, we make a wireflow.
Wireflow 1: See the crowd and safety level in supermarkets
Wireflow 2: Create a report of crowd and safety level in a supermarket
Wireflow 3: Create a Self Pick-Up order
Wireflow 4: See the QR Code for picking up a Self Pick-Up order
High Fidelity Prototype
The final prototype can be found here (after two iterations of usability testing)
We started developing the user interface after the structure and flow were finalized. The most difficult challenge we faced during the UI design was figuring out how to include accurate details about each supermarket's security and safety (in the sense of health protocol enforcement) without making it too complicated and difficult to learn.
Final prototype after three iterations of design
// to do detailed differences between iterations
Testing
We use three different approaches to test our design and collect potential improvements to ensure that our proposed solution is actually useful and can function properly. Heuristic evaluation, usability testing, and expert review are the approaches we're employing.
Heuristic Evaluation
Before we test the prototype to end users, we test them first against 10 Usability Heuristics by Jakob Nielsen to ensure carefully that our design has met with these requirements.
One of the heuristics: Match between system and the real world
Usability Testing
We evaluate our app directly with users after performing heuristic evaluation to gather as much data and insight as possible about its usability. We conduct this testing to a total of 10 testers comprised of 5 testers of each user group. However, because of COVID-19, performing a usability test is no longer as easy as it once was. We use a combination of in-person and remote usability testing methods, both of which are moderated.
First iteration Usability Testing
Second iteration Usability Testing
To play the prototype and record the interaction, we used Maze as a UT platform. We also used tools like Lookback, Google Meet, and Zoom for remote usability testing. To see if there is a change in numbers between each iteration, we used three different quantitative scoring methods:
Maze Usability Score (MUS)
Collected with Maze, a wonderful app to gather quantitative evaluation data based on a wide range of data, including bounce rate, drop-off rate, misclick rate, average screen duration, heat-maps, and other things.
System Usability Scale (SUS)
10 item questionnaire to determine a usability score of a system.
Single Ease Question (SEQ)
A 7-point rating scale to assess how difficult users find a task. We used this scoring method because it's simple enough to be asked at the end of every mission, but it give a picture of how the user feel at the moment.
Expert Review
We also used the Expert Review to get feedback on our proposed application design from six experts. Strengths, challenges, guidelines, and best practices were gathered and will be used as a guide for improving Minits in the next iteration.
Expert Review Process
Iterative Design Process
As mentioned before, we develop this prototype with multiple iterations. Our iterative process should look like this:
We only perform usability testing in the first and second iterations, as seen in the diagram above, with a total of 20 participants. We discovered improvements in quantitative evaluations gathered from these two usability research runs.
Quantitative Evaluation from two iterations. Lighter color is first iteration, darker color is the second iteration
We decided not to test the third iteration because the changes from the previous iteration are mostly minimal, and the scores we received from these three quantitative tests are still very good.
Conclusion
Despite the fact that we came in fourth place, I believe this was a very comprehensive experience in terms of UX research and design. I was able to interact with and understand the user effectively. They seem to be enthusiastic about our proposed application, and I'm curious if the app will be published.
There was one crucial insight that really opened my eyes, and it was when I realized that Minits are useful not just in pandemic situations, but also in everyday situations.
People has always been avoiding crowds when they're shopping, with or without the pandemic. Minits give people a real-time information and prediction that people can use to consider shopping in a supermarket at a certain time. We also see that this app can also be used on other types of places other than supermarket.