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Simplifying Online Grocery Shopping for Families

Uncovering the emotional and practical frustrations behind online grocery shopping and reimagining the experience

BACKGROUND

FamilyCart is a mid-sized online grocery delivery service that supports busy families through personalized shopping experiences and user-friendly digital tools.

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Founded five years ago, the company serves urban and suburban areas, with a focus on households with children. By offering convenience, cost savings, and tailored recommendations, FamilyCart aims to make grocery shopping faster, easier, and more aligned with the diverse needs of modern families.

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Challenge

FamilyCart wanted to serve families with diverse needs better, but lacked a clear understanding of how caregivers shop and make decisions.

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Without deeper insight into user behavior, there was a risk of under-delivering on personalization, missing opportunities to drive engagement, and losing ground to larger competitors.

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Role: User Experience (UX) Researcher
Timeline: 10 weeks

Team: Myself and another UX Researcher

Stakeholders: FamilyCart

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PROCESS

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1. Establish Team Norms 

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2. Define Research Questions

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3. Conduct User Interviews

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4. Design and Launch Survey

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5. Create Design Artifacts

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6. Conduct Usability Testing

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7. Deliver Recommendations

ESTABLISH TEAM NORMS

Before diving into any research activities, my teammate and I aligned on how we would work together for the duration of the 10 weeks. We wanted to present as a unified team, not just in our external communications but also in how we shared responsibility and navigated collaboration behind the scenes.

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As we created the charter, we asked ourselves: 

  • How do we prefer to communicate? 

  • How will we hold each other accountable during moments of conflict?

  • What process will we use to make decisions? â€‹

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Together, we co-created a team charter that outlined expectations around roles, communication, and decision-making. This helped us build trust, clarify availability, and establish norms for addressing conflict. 

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We divided responsibilities based on our strengths and committed to reviewing each other’s work and being transparent about any challenges that arose.

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This charter wasn’t just a document; it was an intentional step toward psychological safety, clear accountability, and shared ownership throughout the project

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DEFINE RESEARCH QUESTIONS

After aligning on the overall objectives and understanding the problem space, the next critical step in our research process was to define the research questions. This would guide the entire study and ensure that the insights we gathered were directly tied to FamilyCart’s goals. ​

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The research questions developed were: 

  • What challenges do caregivers face when grocery shopping for their families, and how do they prioritize their needs when shopping online?​​

  • What factors are most important to caregivers when selecting a grocery shopping platform, and how do these factors influence their decision to return?​

  • How do current grocery shopping tools (such as Amazon Fresh and Walmart Grocery) meet or fall short of caregivers' needs?​

  • What emotions do caregivers experience during the grocery shopping process, and how do these emotions impact their loyalty to a particular service or platform?

CONDUCT USER INTERVIEWS

To build a more nuanced understanding of the challenges and motivations of caregivers using online grocery platforms, the research team began with a small set of qualitative interviews. 

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This method allowed us to surface deeper emotional insights and behavioral patterns that other research methods might not reveal. 

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After developing the research questions, informed consent documentation, and interview script, we conducted two user interviews. 

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Participant criteria were as follows:

  • Age 18 or older

  • Primary grocery shoppers in households with children

  • Prior experience with online grocery shopping platforms
     

Each interview lasted approximately 20 minutes and was conducted over Zoom. I served as the facilitator for one interview and the notetaker for the other.

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Sample questions included:

  • Give me a quick rundown of what a typical online grocery shopping experience looks like for you.

  • Tell me more about a negative online grocery shopping experience you’ve recently had.

  • If you could wave a magic wand to improve your online grocery shopping experience, what would you change or add?
     

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After the interviews, audio was transcribed verbatim. The transcripts were then coded using a predefined coding sheet to identify common themes.

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High-level coding categories included:

  • Tools: Services and applications used to shop

  • Drivers: Motivations behind choosing online platforms

  • Pain Points: Challenges, frustrations, or unmet needs
     

The data was then synthesized into a qualitative thematic summary. 

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Themes Identified

1. Drivers That Encourage Online Grocery Shopping

Participants highlighted convenience, time-saving features, reduced impulse spending, and residual pandemic-era habits as primary motivations.

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2. Pain Points of the Online Experience

Users expressed frustration with limited control over product selection (especially fresh produce), lack of real-time updates, and unsustainable practices like excessive plastic bag use.

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3. Positive Aspects of Online Tools & Services

Participants appreciated tools that were intuitive, ethical, and responsive. Features like real-time shopper communication and accurate order updates made them feel more confident and calm.

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“I'm in my comfortable chair with a cup of coffee, and the stuff shows up at my door… then I've gone grocery shopping.”

“You find out that the one thing you really wanted, they don't have… now you still have to go out and get it.”

“I’m not surprised about what’s in your order when it’s delivered, I’ve been told along the way what they could or couldn't get.”

DESIGN AND LAUNCH SURVEY

To validate themes from the interviews and explore additional patterns at scale, a survey was released. 

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Survey Structure and Rationale

The survey was created using Qualtrics and structured into three key sections:

  1. Habits and Preferences - To understand frequency, platform use, and overall context

  2. Motivations and Frustrations - To investigate key drivers and challenges

  3. Priorities - To assess what users value most in their online grocery shopping experience
     

All questions were closely tied to the research questions guiding our project, with several informed directly by quotes and pain points uncovered during interviews. This ensured continuity between qualitative and quantitative phases while also surfacing new dimensions for exploration.

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Sample questions included:

  • How often do you online grocery shop?

  • What is your primary reason for shopping for groceries online?

  • Rank the following aspects of online grocery shopping based on how frustrating they are

  • How important are environmental concerns when choosing a grocery service?

  • If you could wave a magic wand to improve your experience, what would you change or add?
     

The survey was distributed and received 50 responses. 

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Key Findings & Early Patterns

Once responses were collected, we analyzed the data through the lens of our original research questions.

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R1: What challenges do caregivers face when grocery shopping for their families?

  • High fees were ranked as the #1 frustration by 44% of respondents.

  • Items out of stock followed, with 26% ranking it as their top issue.

  • Dietary restriction challenges occurred occasionally for 40% of respondents, while another 40% indicated they rarely experienced such difficulties.

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 Ranked Frustrations When Grocery Shopping Online

R2: What factors are most important to an enjoyable shopping experience?

  • 70% of respondents selected convenience as the primary reason for using online grocery tools.

  • 62% ranked savings (discounts and deals) as very important.

  • 48% indicated that a reorder feature was either very important or important.

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Features Important for Using Online Grocery Shopping

R3: What apps or tools work well for people?

  • Instacart was the most used platform (34%), followed by Walmart+ InHome (26%).

  • These usage patterns reflect brand recognition and regional availability, suggesting a potential design opportunity to improve lesser-known platforms’ discoverability or usability.

 Most Frequently Used Grocery Delivery Services

R4: What emotions do caregivers experience while shopping?
Open-ended responses to the question "In 1-2 sentences, if you could wave a magic wand to improve your online grocery shopping experience, what would you change or add?" reflected a wide emotional spectrum.

 

Words like “exorbitant,” “frustrating,” “love,” and “unexpected” offered a textured view into the emotional highs and lows of online grocery experiences. Below is a word cloud of the free response answers. 

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DESIGN ARTIFACTS

To ensure the research findings meaningfully inform design, we developed key artifacts: three user personas and two customer journey maps.


I led the development of the journey maps, while my teammate designed the initial personas.
These artifacts capture user behaviors, needs, and pain points, serving as actionable tools to guide the next phase of our work.

 

Here is a snippet of the persona and the journey map to illustrate how we translated insights into design-ready context.

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USABILITY TESTING

To deepen our understanding of online grocery shopping behaviors, we conducted moderated usability tests using the Instacart website as a stand-in for FamilyCart’s platform. 

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We ran two 30-minute remote sessions with participants who had prior experience with online grocery shopping. Tasks included finding sales, adding specific items to the cart, leaving notes for shoppers, and scheduling deliveries. 

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Through the think-aloud method, we observed areas where participants struggled, notably with locating features like “Pick a replacement,” “Shopper notes,” and sale items.
 

Usability Test Task Completion Summary

DELIVER RECOMMENDATIONS

Recommendations Delivered to FamilyCart

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1. Product Ideas for FamilyCart

  • “Based on Your Shopping Habits” Section

  •  Personalized homepage recommendations based on previous orders


2. Emphasize Shopper Instructions

  •  Make it easier for users to find and use notes for substitutions

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3. Weekly Deals Module

  • Surface promotions clearly and early in the shopping experience

  • Add a “Savings Summary” in checkout to increase perceived value


4. Transparent Pricing Messaging
Highlight FamilyCart’s no-hidden-fees model on home, cart, and promo pages

 

Furture Research Opportunities

Research is a continus process. Below are future potential research oppurtunities the team could pursue. 

 

  • Contextual Field Studies: Observe caregivers’ full online-to-door experience

  • Shopper Perspective Interviews: Understand how personal shoppers interpret and fulfill user preferences

  • A/B Testing: Explore how surfacing deals or recommendations influences engagement
     

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REFLECTION

Working on this project taught me that the smallest friction points, like unclear substitution tools or hidden deals, can ripple into major frustrations when someone is juggling work, caregiving, and budgeting. 

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I enjoyed translating raw insights into actionable product ideas that respect both the emotional and logistical realities of shopping for a family.

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Overall, I’m reminded that good design isn’t only about adding features, it’s about removing stress.

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