Design for collective family experiences during online grocery shopping

Abstract

Doing groceries is an inherent part of family life (Pettersson, Olsson, & Fjellström, 2004). Families are recognized as a unit for food choice and consumption. The influence of family members on food choices happens throughout family life and takes place in the private home or in the public sphere, mainly grocery stores. Picnic is an online-only grocery store delivering groceries in The Netherlands and Germany. Families are their biggest target group, averagely placing the largest and most frequent orders (Picnic, 2019). However, since Picnic does not have brick and mortar stores, all orders are placed via their smartphone app for iOS and Android devices. This deviation from traditional grocery shopping profoundly changes the family decision-making process in food buying and consumption (Suwandinata, 2011). Whereas grocery stores can act as arenas of family interactions including children constantly influencing their parents, directly and indirectly (Haselhoff, Faupel, & Holzmüller, 2014), the online grocery shopping process is mainly an individual experience. This behavioural change significantly affects the sense of shared responsibility within families. Moreover, it prevents kids from learning how to act and behave as responsible consumers, to get educated about healthy eating habits and to understand the value of money (Suwandinata, 2011).Therefore, the aim of this research is to explore ways to actively engage multiple family members in the online grocery shopping experience. With the goal of ultimately fostering a feeling of togetherness and shared responsibility within families, making the online shopping process resemble a festive family ritual while celebrating the involvement of kids.Various design methods and tools are used during this project, mainly following the Design Thinking methodology and applying parts of the Vision in Product Design framework. After empathizing with internal and external stakeholders and gathering insights on the context from a higher perspective, a design statement has been formulated. Subsequently, multiple rounds of prototyping rounds were executed, constantly involving the target audience and gathering feedback from the company.The final design takes a granular approach towards creating a collaborative digital grocery shopping process loop. “Picnic Family” facilitates a variety of collaborative family touchpoints throughout the entire service journey and offers new playful ways of grocery shopping. It supports the creation of new family rituals by providing tools that enable new habits of family communication and interaction during online grocery shopping. The “Picnic Family” has been designed and prototyped for smartphones and tablets and each prototype has been evaluated with the target group and internally within Picnic. However, to fully validate the long-term effects of the app, it should be used by families in real life and over time. Additionally, the research of this project and the effects of the designed tools can be used to investigate family collaboration on other digital services, such as e-commerce businesses, travel planning tools, entertainment streaming platforms.