Design question
How can we redesign the supermarket produce section to encourage grocery storecustomers to reduce the amount of plastic produce bags they consume whenshopping for fresh produce at a supermarket?
This design question came from the designthinking class during my GIX graduated study. Our group chose the topic “Reduceusage of plastic” and focused on the plastic produce bag issue in great Seattlearea. We conducted secondary research, field research and survey to learn thedetails about this problem and about our uses. We refined this design questionrepeatedly. And finally decided on redesigning the supermarket produce section.We designed four potential solutions for this problem and accessed them usinglow-fi prototypes and evaluation tests. The result is quit promising. Thoughthere are a lot of things we should adjust or learn more about, our solution helpedconsumers use less plastic produce bags and try more alternatives. However, Ibelieve what we learned from the research process will be more helpful in thefuture.
Our team
Our team members are from differentbackgrounds. Allyson has a HCDE background. She has more experiences in designthinking process. And she made sure that each of our steps are following theguide line. Jerry is good at execute our plans. He helped with a lot of detailsof our project. I got some experience in design thinking during myundergraduate studies but those are not very helpful in this class. However, Ihave done some design before, so I helped more with the layout and videocutting work. All of us participated in the process of coming up with ideas, makingand executing research plans and writing them down in papers. I really enjoyedworking with my teammates for our team’s high efficiency, high quality and the friendlyenvironment.
Our team works are efficient. We meet up frequentlyand none of our meetings is longer than 2 hours. We have clear objectives foreach meeting and we focus on it all the time. During the brainstorms, each ofus get the chance to express our opinions and we will discuss them together. Whenwe face divergence, we are all humble to others’ suggestions and will adjust ormerge our ideas quickly. And we should especially thank Allyson for her contributionto our efficiency. She always starts the work early (right after the class).Jerry and I would do the same thing to keep up with her.
Design thinking process
Secondary research
We conducted the secondary researches to pickthe research topic we would like to work on and to learn the basics of theproblem. We searched data for plastic waste in Seattle area, restrictions onplastic bags and plastic produce bags. We realized that produce plastic bags isan unsolved problem in Seattle and the impact is quite survivor. Later, we didmore research on that problem. We found out several interesting facts:
Plastic produce bags are not included inthe plastic bag ban.
Plastic produce bags cannot be recycled.
Plastic produce bags are better than paperproduce bags to the environment.
According to those facts and otherfindings, we came up with our research questions:
How do grocery shoppers use produce bagswith respect to different types of produce?
When will grocery shoppers use extra bags?
What other ways do grocery shoppers storetheir produce when shopping in a supermarket?
How do grocery store customers feel aboutthe current produce bag supply system?
What do grocery shoppers usually do withthese plastic bags after leaving the supermarket?
Why do supermarkets provide customers withplastic produce bags?
Are supermarkets willing to invest inalternative options?
What are the pros and cons of alternativesolutions?
Is there a standard for produce bags？(what materials can package produces)
My part
I helped with picking up the topic by doinga simple brainstorming by my own. I mainly considered the what, where and whenduring the process. First, I tried to understand what each word in the phrasedoes “Reducing our dependency on plastics” mean. Then I listed out severalkinds of plastics in my daily life and connected them with different scenarios.I came up with this structure.
Later, during our team discussion, we usedthis structure and finally settled our design topic. And we refined that topicinto our design question. We also got part of the research questions out ofthis structure.
After this, I participated in searching fordata. It is the first time I tried to search for a society topic that is not aboutmy homeland. So, I have some trouble figuring our witch kind of informationsource I should be looking for here. I managed to get some data from the government’sreports and some organizations’ websites in the end.
Reflection
Settling down the topic can be hard for ateam. There will be divergence and even conflicts. What I learned from this timeis that we should be discussing our ideas at that stage, instead of attackingothers’ ideas and trying to persuade my teammates with my own. I am glad thatnone of us did the wrong thing during the brainstorming.
And I also got some ideas about gathering data in US. For science projects it’s probably the same everywhere around the world. But for society topics like the grocery stores and plastic usage, I should look for localized data sources. I noticed that the first-hand data form official reports are typically more detailed and easier to get than those from other’s research papers.
Field study
Field study is about getting into the filedand seeing how people interact with the current system. Since our topic isreducing plastic produce bag usage in grocery stores’ produce sections, we needto do the filed study in a real supermarket. Through the field study, we wantto learn how are people using those produce bags, what are they putting in,what are they not putting in and what problems are they facing whileinteraction with the whole system. We got lots of interesting findings out fromour filed study. After the filed study, we meet up again to exchange anddiscuss about our findings using the affinity analysis method. We rearrangedall the facts we saw in the supermarkets and came up with these insights below.(star means we plan to focus on that)
People don’t use bags for banana, pumpkin, melon.
People use extra bags for heavy produce.
People take multiple bags if they are in a hurry or the station iscrowded.
People put small size or a small amount of produce in the producebag; Produce bags are most like half empty. ⭐
People take more bags if they can’t easily get one off thedispenser. ⭐
People like to use the empty side of the bag to hold the bag.
People use produce bags for wet pre-packaged produce. ⭐
People have trouble finding produce bag, so they may take multiplebags at a time and use them later.
Some produce bag is hard to open.
No one used reusable bags/containers. ⭐
No mixing of produce in bags.
My part
The plan was that we three went to different Safeways and observe at their produce sections. However, Jerry and I found that the Safeway we went to did not have any customers at the produce section for us to do the observe. So, we changed our plan and did the filed research in different supermarkets. For me, I chose the Asian Family Market near where I live. There are really a lot of consumers at that store and I took more than 100 notes during the 30min observation. I focused on how people are using those produce bags in the produce section. I wrote down what they put into the bags and how many they put in. I also estimated how much of volume did the consumers use for each bag. And, I noted how people were having trouble with those bags and the bag dispensers. Before the observation starts, I took around 5 min to draw the layout of the produce section. And I added more details after the observation. Parts of my notes are like that (after tiding):
Reflection
The most difficult part of our observation is not been noticed by the guards and kicked out. We decided not to ask for permission for two reasons. First, our observations are not recording any personal data, and shopping in the produce section is public to others. We think we are not violating anyone’s right doing that. Second, based on the suggestions from our teacher and classmates who have done that, we are pretty sure that we will not get the permission if we really ask for it. Though we think we are not violating anything doing the observation, it is still wired to following others and take notes. Therefore, we decided to go to the stores in pairs, and one of us is really doing grocery shopping to make cover for the observer. The field study is an interesting and meaningful experience for me. It is helpful for me to learn how a system works while nobody inside is treating it like a test.
Survey
The survey can help us collect quantitated data. At that stage, we wanted to specify several insights to focus on, and use the survey to see if our insights about the problem is correct. Also, we wanted to know more about the details of the problem. We did another brainstorm to settle down the survey questions. It’s divided into 6 parts. In the first part we got one question about shopping frequency as a screen question (proof to be not helpful in the end). In the next five parts, the questions are around five topics: 1) With what item will people use plastic produce bags and why. 2) Questions about reusable bags. 3) How do they interact with the empty half of the bag. 4) Where do people use the produce bags back home. 5) Awareness. Those topics are basically insights we are interested in from field research. By sending the survey into many groups, we got 27 responses in the end. I will write more about the result in the requirements session.
My part
We three came up with all the surveyquestions together. However, I am particularly interested in the empty half ofthe plastic produce bags. That’s probably because I focused on the volume radioin the field test. I know there is a problem, so I really want to know moreabout it. My teammates do not quit like those two questions. And I can see that.After a brief discussion we decided leave those two questions there and see whatwe get from them. It is nice that Allyson and Jerry allowed me to do that.Because according to the data, people are using the empty half to hold the bagand to close the bag in shopping carts. That basically proofed me wrong becauseif people are using that part, we do not have any simple solution to addressthe low utility issue. Therefore, in the next phase of design thinking process,we do not have any scenarios or potential solutions for that. And I was notfeeling bag about not working on that idea anymore because the result came fromthe data.
Reflection
One interesting thing is that before we send out the survey, we did two rounds of pre-tests. We don’t think it is necessary as first. But it turned out to be super helpful. With each pre-test, we can find defects of our survey. For instance, the first participant did not know what we mean by “reusable containers” at first. Then we adjusted our survey and put the question with picture of several kinds of reusable containers before others. And in the second round, we found that one of question got the wrong selecting logic. Pre-tests are important before we send something to a lot of people, like a survey. And those tests improved the quality of our data.
Design requirements
After the secondary research and primaryresearches, we started to work on our design requirements. We did one morebrain storm for that. I will not list all the requirements here. Please referto our writeups. Our design requirements came from different stages of ourresearches. For instance,The solution should not negatively impact business (steer customers away). Thisone came from the survey. In the survey, we asked the consumers what they woulddo if a supermarket stopped providing plastic produce bags. And one participant replied, “I will not shop in that store anymore.” We realized that supermarketsare still providing those bags because they do not want to lose any customersfor not having them. And we should pay attention to that too. The solution should discourage wasted, unused plastic produce bags. This one is from our observation, we saw people using plastic bags for items that not necessarily need a bag. Sometimes they also got too many bags at once and left several in the cart empty. With those requirements, we started to get a sense of what we were going to build in the end.
Ideation
For the idea part, we did a lot of discussion and made some trade offs for each other. We all agreed on the signs from the beginning. Jerry got the idea of the basket rental system. Allyson wanted to make a box that people can return their unused bags. And I wanted to provide smaller produce bags. At the beginning, we were trying to pick one of the ideas as our prototype and test it. However, those ideas are all valuable (Mine is difficult to test since those produce bags provided by supermarkets already are the smallest.). So, we don’t want to abandon too much on anyone of them. After about half an hour, we decided to test them all (Except mine) in the evaluation phase. That meant there were a lot of work to do in the last phase. But we thought, why not, we should not abandon an idea so easily at this stage. If we do not test them out, how would we know witch one is better. So, I started to design the orthogonal experiments since there were four things we want to test. We need to design the experiments carefully to test all of them with as few subjects as possible. The following part are the experiments I designed at first.
Orthogonal experiment:
Parameters:
Signs: Y means signs designed to lead consumers using less plastic bags. N means signs only indicate the prices.
Recycled bags: Y means providing recycled produce bags and new produce bags at the produce section. N means provide only new produce bags.
Extra bags: Y means forcing consumers to get extra bags at the beginning and have extra bag recycle basket and trash bin in the section. N means not doing that.
Basket rental: Y means provide basket rental. N means provide basket selling. N/A means no basket provided.
Evaluations:
Will the signs influence consumers’ bag usage? (1+2)
How will people deal with extra bags? (3)
Are people willing to use recycled bags? (1+2)
Will people use the basket rental service? (1+2)
This part was not shown in any materials we submitted. However, our final evaluation plan came from this one. We asked the teacher about this plan and she recommended us to do this in the future since the time is limited.
And there were a lot of things we needed for the evaluation process, so I listed our everything we might need for the evaluation and how we were going the get them. This table really helped us to arrange the final experiments.
Material requirements:
Not everything was following this plan too. Like we did not make the dispensers by ourselves. Instead, we used the holder for the big paper rolls in our makerspace. But it is always a good thing to have a plan.
Prototypes
We got four types of prototypes for the evaluation:
1) Signs for environmental impact and package tips.
We have four signs for this part. One to remind people to bring their reusable bags. Two about the environmental impact of these plastic produce bags. The last one is package tips for produces that do not need extra packages. Those signs are designed by Allyson and are printed out by me and Jerry.
2) Unused bag box for consumer to return and get unused bags.
Allyson covered a candy box with brown paper and I made a sign behind it. That is our unused bag box. We wanted to test if people were willing to use the bags in that box. And how they were going to deal with the extra bags.
3) Basket rental system.
We planned to buy a metal basket for this part. However, the metal basket costs $9 and we were not likely to use it in the future. So, we used a plastic packing bag for this prototype. Jerry designed the sign for showing how this system works. Our assumption was, consumers would get this basket before they enter the produce section. And they will pay the deposit at checkout. Whenever they return the basket, they can get the deposit back.
4) Reusable bag coupon.
This idea was enlightened by Sarah (our teacher) during the pre-test rounds. We were just selling reusable bags for the pre-tests. However, people did not choose it for its price. Sarah recommended us to somehow promote the usage of those reusable bags. Since one insight we found in the survey is that people do not like to be charged for packaging, we decided to give each consumer a chance to get one reusable produce bag. We bought several reusable produce bags from Amazon and made the sign and fake coupon for them.
Link to prototype in use:
https://drive.google.com/open?id=1jwfgMdgeo5AZ2GXIGb5MazjoewadrRYV
My part:
Besides those four prototypes, we still got a lot of things to prepare. Jerry and I made the fake produce posters shown on the table to make the produce section more real since we are not going to buy that many produces. We also went shopping to get the eight produces we needed. For the produce bag dispenser, I came up with the idea of using the paper roll holder. It turned out working. I also participated in setting up the layout of our fake produce section. For all the paper signs, Jerry and I adjusted the colors and printed them out using the plotter. And we pasted them onto cardboards too.
Reflections:
To setup such a huge prototype platform, we really need to make the plan far ahead the tests. The plan helped us keep on track. And for low-fi prototype, there are many ways to lower the cost and time needed. For example, use a computer chair the simulate the shopping cart. Though it looks far from a shopping cart, it can move, and it can hold produce. Therefore, it is perfect to serve as a fake shopping cart. But for some other elements like the produce we use, only use fake produce is a bad idea. Produce is the core of our tests. All our studies are around consumers interaction with the produce and the produce bags. We used cardboard produces in the pre-test rounds. And our participants will not take more than one bag because they can easily put all cardboards in one bag and can not feel the characteristics of the produces (wet, hart, soft, juicy, etc.). Therefore, making low-fi prototypes is about making the right simplifications. We need to maintain the essential details and reduce the total work at the same time.
Evaluation tests
In the evaluation, we had three scenarios for each participant.
1) The participant is given 6 bags at once, and only need to buy 3 types of produce.
2) The participant can use any kinds of packaging as they wish to buy 7 types of produce.
3) The participant is given one reusable produce bag coupon. They can use any means for the packaging. And they need to buy three types of produce.
Overall, we wanted to evaluate the four prototypes we designed.
1) Are they willing to use the bags from the unused bag box?
2) Will they notice and return the unused bags?
3) Will they notice the signs and are the signs helpful?
4) Will they use the basket rental system?
5) Will the coupon promote reusable bag usage?
As I mentioned earlier, we did two rounds of tests and reconfigured some details of our settings after the first round. Those details are: 1) We bought real produce to replace the face cardboard produce. 2) We changed the position of the sighs to make it more noticeable and more related. 3) We redesigned the checkout table to guide participants to put the produce on the table at the end of each test.
The results are listed in the table below.
My part
I was the notetaker for the evaluation process. And from my notes, I made the table of results. I also cut the video for prototype in use for our team.
Reflection
Think out loud is important in the evaluation process especially when there are not than many participants in the test. We need to know what people are thinking to figure out if our prototypes are doing their work. However, this is difficult for the participants to do. They always forget to think out loud during the shopping. And we are missing a lot of information for that. For example, we cannot know if the environmental signs helped or not. In the future, we should talk to the participant more frequently to know how they feel about each detail of our design.
Conclusion
1) Unused bag box is great. People have no trouble using bags others left in the box. And they will return their unused bag if the box is noticed. This maybe the solution for the unused bag problem.
2) Basket rental is confusing. People are interested in the system. But they do not know how it works. And they also mistook the produce baskets for shopping baskets.
3) Package tips helped reducing the number of plastic bags used on produce with its own package. We do not know if environmental impact signs worked or not.
4) With the coupon, people will use one reusable bag, and they are happy about this. However, we do not know if they will reuse those bags in the future.
Future work
1) More iterations and tests to refine our ideas and solutions.
2) Contrast tests and more participants for quantitative data.
3) Tests in real stores.
