Kroger Shelf Price Audit

Role: Senior UX Designer

The Shelf Price Audit, SPA, tool is part of the Kroger's InStock suite of applications that allowed store associates to update prices of items, print shelf tags on the mobile printer and update templates for tags.

Team:

1 UX Designer (me)

1 Project Manager

1 Content Strategist

2 Engineers

1 User Researcher

1 Systems Analyst

1 Prototyper

the challenge

The challenge was how to get users to adopt a digital process on Android platform by incorporating multiple features; product scan and product details, price audit, print tags, change tag templates, and all the while getting store associates to engage and adopt this application over previous versions.

User engagement and streamlining multiple complex features in one application were critical aspects of this effort.

My approach

Understand users’ task flows around scanning items and the process of printing and attaching shelf tags to replace prior tags based on new sales promotions at the store and to streamline this process, and create contextual interactions to improve the associate experience and productivity.

research

Conduct Interviews

In order to better understand key insights from the business owners, I conducted multiple discovery sessions.

Develop Personas

Based on the interviews, we developed two personas that encompasses typical users of SPA.

Ideate

I created mockups that revolved around the two personas that addresses their goals and struggles using the mobile app.

Validate

A user researcher conducted a usability test using a prototype based on the wireframes to validate against a set of metrics and objectives.

personas

1) Store Leader

  • Responsible for making sales promotions on various items in the store

  • Provides list of coupon codes to Michael to apply to items as part of sales promotions

  • Responsible for signs pertaining to promotional items so she needs to be able to change and review design templates for signs before printing them to put on sales floor.

2) Store Associate 

  • Performs price audit of items on the shelf

  • He typically has a list of coupon codes to apply to an item to update its price due to store sales and promotional campaigns

  • He can print Comtec tags right from the mobile printer on the sales floor. For signs, he has to print it from upstairs printer

  • There is a list of items in the queue he goes through and every time he prints, it's saved to a batch or he can save it manually

usability testing

We conducted a usability study on the prototype to understand user engagement.

Here are the main takeaways:

  • Associates found the home page to be useful and easy to navigate

  • There were some confusion over selecting tag and sign templates and its implications on the store

  • There were some confusion over batch selections and tag/sign templates

  • Associates liked the ability to change printers on the fly in terms of instructions to pair to the new printer by scan or entering printer name

final designs

The findings from the usability study informed the designs.