Smhood
Enabling a faster and better grocery shopping experience
Overview
In the year of the Pandemic, with lockdowns around the world, social distancing became the buzz and consumer shopping behaviour was redefined.
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A trend was set in its wake as the adoption of e-commerce experienced major growth. Along with this, neighborhood stores experienced increased patronage, with more people working from home.
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Since the third quarter of 2021, I have led a team in the development of Smhood, an effective solution that helps consumers buy groceries faster. This is the story of why and how.
My Shopping Experience
Being particular about brands I patronize, I would often struggle to find choice products when the stores closest to me ran out of stock.
This often meant that I hopped from store to store in search of choice brands and desired product. The option to buy online from an e-commerce website meant I didn't get the product for another week.
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The search was often times a major inconvenience and time consuming venture, and every now and then I simply would not find what I wanted even after visiting multiple stores.
What Exists?
After a number of frustrating "hops", I decided there had to be a smarter way to get what I want. I searched the internet and App Store hoping to find something that can help rid this pain. What I found in Instant delivery services, a rather new venture in Africa, was that they either didn't deliver to my location or had buggy unresponsive apps.
Solving a Problem for Everyone
In search of a viable solution, I decided to carry out some research to understand if this experience was one unique to me (It wasn't) and how I can solve it..
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Carrying out user interviews, data showed that 95% of participants had experienced similar situations within the past month. With the information retrieved I had better insight to understand the elements of what would constitute an effective solution.
What do you do when a store is out of stock on items you wish to buy?
Visit Other Stores
Buy an alternative Brand/Product
Wait for Store to restock (Go home)
Search on e-commerce sites
*Data was sampled from 30 participants.
Resources
Role
Product Developer
Product Designer
UX Research
UI/UX Designer
Team
Rugba Karika
1 Software Developer
Duration
August 2021 - Present
Designing to Find
The primary questions that informed my design decisions include:​
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Who am I designing for?
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What goal are they looking to achieve?
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How do they currently solve this problem?
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What will be the simplest most rewarding experience?
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From the data collected, I created a user persona to help illustrate the experience and current reality of prospective users. This helped me to walk in the shoes of users for better understanding of the problem.
From the user persona created, I was able to decide what actions and features were crucial and beneficial, and designed a simple user flow around these. I wanted to create a seamless experience for prospective users by emphasizing on simplicity of finding.
My first decision was to design for mobile as that would enable the solution fit into the daily processes of prospective users.
Initial mockup illustrating user flow
Defining a Brand
With the progress, I carried out further surveys and user interviews in order to refine the design before development. Further iterations were made to the design, and a prototype was developed.
Along with this, I worked on developing the brand's identity; designing the logo and brand aesthetics, to allow users identify with the solution easily and to build trust.
Feel free to walk through the Prototype
Progress so far...
For now, the primary search feature is live and can be accessed on www.smhood.store. I have however designed further iterations of the product to include some essential features and improve the visuals. I have included a mockup of a high fidelity wireframe (final design... for now) illustrating the user flow below...
