Innovation in legacy markets
With online grocery shopping exploding all around us, how does an investor evaluate the potential for a new service? Instashop was a complete end-to-end product design exercise to assess the online grocery space, starting from competitive research all the way to designing a complete online shopping service.
Research
Given the rather broad scope of the problem, I started with a multifaceted research strategy to understand the points of friction and broad user behavior
- Observing user behavior in physical stores (Contextual Enquiry)
- Surveys
- Analysis of (over 50+) random assortment of grocery bills, both online as well as in-person shopping
- Customer Interviews
- Secondary market research (based on publicly available information for both brick-&-mortar and online grocery retailers)
This broad, large scale analysis helped define the demographics of shoppers, their motivations and goals, independent of any particular product or service. The data almost naturally started coalescing into clear and distinct personas.
4 distinct personas
The data naturally coalesced into 4 distinct personas, and it was clear that even between these, the personas with busy schedules made the ideal demographic to serve with online services - due to both their obvious need as well as their willingness to invest and experiment with new services.
A deeper understanding
Digging deeper into the lives of our two target personas, to build empathy maps and storyboards, brought out the points of highest friction and greatest opportunities.
Building a product
At this stage, when asked to evaluate key requirements for a creating an online store for a brick-&-mortar retailer that is losing business to competition, there is enough depth to start designing product requirements.
COMPEtitive analysis
Multiple rounds of detailed competitive analysis help clarify features that will drive adoption and excitement vs. blending in with the landscape.
THE NITTY GRITTY
Continuing with building out an online presence for a retail store, the detailed process of design kicks in with sitemaps, wireframes and user flows.
INSTASHOP
Culminating in a modern, mobile first design complete with branding, logos and a complete visual design.
