Go Grocery Trailer
Sketch of the self-driving grocery delivery trailer.
Text message that gives information about grocery delivery, and concept drawing of grocery trailer
Hunger is distracting. Without access to healthy foods, people become malnourished, affecting the body and the brain.
The Go Grocery Trailer addresses the systemic problem of food insecurity by delivering fresh groceries directly to those in need.
The autonomous vehicle brings groceries to customers twice a week who would not otherwise be able to get them conveniently.
Skills
Ethnographic interviews
Quant/Qual Data analysis
Prototyping
Role
Service designer
Researcher
Tools
Axure
Figma
Miro
Notion
vroom
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vroom 〰️
Key Features
Automated trailers that gather in easy to access places like schools, and parks close to our users home in our target area to grant access to food.
A refrigerated cabin to deliver curated ingredients like fresh fruits and veggies to our users
An SMS service to allow all of our users to communicate with the trailer to learn about the menu, how much food they will need, locations closets to them, and hours of operation
A pay what you can low waste business model customers have an option to get their groceries for free, allowing us to serve all customers no matter their socioeconomic status. Food that is left over at the end of the day is donated to local soup kitchens.
Social Impact
If implemented 80,000 Texans would have access to fresh fruit and veg, that would not have it otherwise
If implemented rates of stunted growth in children could decrease due to healthier food access.
If implemented rates of type 2 diabetes may drop in the community.
Designs don’t fall out of the sky, so here is our research!
Secondary Research
We learned about our users key pain points, how self-driving trailers can help, and much more using over 50 secondary sources.
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Our users live in an urban food desert, meaning they do not live within 1 mile of grocery store
Our users mostly rely on public transportation to traverse their city. Making it important that we come to them.
Our users have little to no experience with self-driving tech
Our users may not have access to wifi at all times making SMS messages the easiest way to contact them.
Considering how our designs will effect the future.
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self-driving tech could enable crime, so our trailer has automatic locking mechanisms and monitoring cameras on the inside of the cabin
Self driving tech negates the need for hitches making load time quicker
Reversing Assumptions
We all know what happens when we assume... we dispelled 83 assumptions about modern tech to reveal all the possibilities of next gen technology.
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Our users live in an urban food desert, meaning they do not live within 1 mile of grocery store
Our users have little to no experience with self-driving tech
Our users mostly rely on public transportation to traverse their city.
Observations and Interviews
To learn more about self driving tech we visited 3 trailer retailers including Tesla and conducted 3 ethnographic interviews to validate our design.
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“Teslas use around 12 sensors to drive, and are one of the most safe cars to drive” - Tesla gallery attendant
“One of the most important things to consider is battery temperature” -Peterbilt employee
“Yeah… with all of the sensors you have I think it would be able to drive on its own.” -Peterbilt employee
Insights yield deliverables!
After analyzing our research, we created several research deliverables to synthesize our findings and further our process.
Our service addresses the shame that Rhonda (our researched informed persona), may feel because she can’t provide the right nutrition to her children, as well as the discomfort she might face interacting with our self-driving trailer, because of unfamiliarity, through our text message service.
AEIOU Notes
The AEIOU process is used to help synthesize the different points of interaction in an experience. We observed the activities, environment, interactions, objects and users at Home Depot.
AEIOU Notes helped us to understand…
The most difficult thing to manage when driving a hitched trailer is added wait especially for inexperience drivers
Trailer rental is usually done with no employee contact, and is handled online.
Sometimes customers are not aware of the type of hitch they will need or their vehicle
Concept Map
Our trailer concept map was created through secondary research on self-driving tech and was validated by a Peterbilt employee, who informed us that the systems on our concept map, would enable our technology to work.
We found…
To ensure safety our trailer had to have several sensors for sight in case of sensor failure
Cameras are not always a reliable sensor as they can easily be obstructed
To reach as many customers as possible safely our trailers would follow one another on with a leader that is monitored by a human
We need to accept that the future is deterministic and there is nothing we can really do. All that was and is going to be is written to a "big book" and it can be read from the stars. Almost everything is fixed and decided and we can only follow the big plan.
The work that we do is futile.
People who view the world through lens 6 may think that our work is valuable as it was predestined to happen, or think that our work to solve large problems is mute. As designers, this is a person who could create buy-in for.
Lens 7
We need a strong enlightened dictator to lead the way for the better. Ordinary people are merely sheep without vision. They should not be asked what to do. We need a strong leader who can make things happen and who has visions for a better future.
Technology must be governed
A person who views the world through lens 7, may be worried about the regulation of self-driving technology. This view allowed us to focus on safety features, like the automatic open and shutting of the doors, and ways bad actors could take advantage of our service.
Considering Multiple Views of Technology
People have many different views of the future and technology, some are not always in favor of new technology. Looking at the future through Dator’s 9 lenses, we were able to synthesize all of our secondary research, and frame of our service to target, a specific lens which we want to view our design through.
We wanted to view our service through the lens that makes technology an equalizer, that had the power to help others (lens 4) if coupled with breaking down and rebuilding current infrastructure. Below are some lenses that challenged our design.
Lens 1
We need progress, growth, and more technology. Belief in rationally and man in the centre of the world. The growth of the economy and investment in research will solve all our problems and make the world better day by.
How the lenses affect Go Grocery Trailer
Technology is progress.
People who look through lens 1 will receive our design well but may have an overreliance on technology.
Lens 6
How Does it Work?
The Go Grocery Trailer lives in a holistic system that considers safe trailer transit, human to computer interaction, and minimizing food waste. Peep our story boards to see how it works!
Part 1 Jeremy Learns About the Go Grocery Trailer
Jeremy, a student at Dallas College, doesn’t have any groceries in his fridge. Because it is hard to find time to grocery shop without a car and a heavy class schedule.
Part 2 Jeremy Rides the Bus to the Go Grocery Trailer
Because Jeremy doesn’t have a car he follows the bus directions sent to him on his phone to visit the Go Grocery Trailer.
He checks his phone to make sure he knows what stop to get off at.
Jeremy rides the bus to the stop.
Jeremy arrives at the food trailer.
Part 3 Jeremy Gets Groceries for Free
Jeremy realizes he has very little money in his bank account, but remembers from his texts that the Go Grocery Trailer is a pay-what-you-can service.
Jeremy is able to select fresh produce.
Jeremy gets his groceries for free since he didn’t have enough money to pay this time.
Jeremy arrives home with his fresh groceries.
A Go Grocery Employee Takes Leftovers to a Local Soup Kitchen
At the end of opening hours, there is excess perishable food in the trailers.
Our Holistic Ecosystem map
While taking the bus to class Jeremy sees an ad for the Go Grocery Trailer on his bus.
The employee takes inventory of the extra food.
Jeremy finds out that he can text “Food” to 5067 to learn more about the grocery trailer.
All the food gets consolidated into the main trailer.
After sending the text Jeremy is sent information about, the menu, hours and availability, how to be prepared for his visit and, customized directions.
The food is delivered to a local soup kitchen that accepts donations.
Lo-Fi white board Gallery
5 or more Expo markers were harmed in the creation of this project, but here are a few of my whiteboard sketches, that show our initial designs.
The initial design for the Go Grocery trailer including all required sensors and technology. Sketching this out was a wonderful way to check my understanding of all the technology that had to go into our design, and rapidly write down questions, before making computer mock-ups.
Initial system design for the Go Grocery Trailer. White boarding how my system would end from start to finish helps unearth holes in the design and highlights the most important moments in a holistic system.
Initial sketches for how to prototype the look of a chatbot in Axure. Sketching the functionality of the prototype saved time in Axure, and allowed me to explore new strategies.
The initial design for our circular business model including transit, arrival, and emptying of leftover contents. Simplifying our large system design into sketches allows us to explain our process on a high level, to other people.
Hi-Fi Prototype!
Our final proof of concept includes a prototype of out SMS feature made in Axure. As well as a full case study, and diagrams of our business model as well as, a sketch of our trailer
This video of our SMS prototype shows how our customers would interact with our chat bot, as well as what kind of information they can receive.
Our water color sketch is an imaginative and playful image of what the Go Grocery Trailer could look like.