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This project aims to explore the possibilities of in-store grocery stores and enhance the in-store grocery shopping experience of people in wheelchairs with more accessible and inclusive design-- smart attachable shopping carts.
@Kroger @Target @Fresh Thyme
4 traditional observations at stores including Kroger, Fresh Thyme, and Target were conducted to gain a better understanding of our potential stakeholders.
Literature review mainly focused on 3 topics listed below:
The definition of “Disability” & why “Accessibility” matters.
What is “Assistive Technology” and how we can leverage it.
Previous research work of enhancing in-store grocery shopping experience for people with disabilities.
Medical models tend to view disability as a problem of an individual performing activities as a result of impairment. However, social models view disability as a socially created problem, resulting in a lack of integration of individuals with impairments into society (Borg, Larsson, & Östergren, 2011).
Disability is not just a physical or inherent attribute but a result of interactions between people and their physical and social environments.
Assistive Technology could be assistive devices, mobility aids, braille, and augmentative and alternative communication (Borg, Larsson, & Östergren, 2011).
15 million individuals with disabilities using Assistive Technology (AT), 6.4 million use ambulatory aids (canes, crutches, walkers, etc.), and 2.2 million use wheelchairs (Stumbo, Martin, and Hedrick, 2009).
A large majority of previous assistive technology design and research associated with grocery shopping focuses on aiding or enhancing the shopping experience of the population with visual impairment.
We see affinity diagrams as a way of summarizing and distilling insights from the needs of our stakeholders. We categorized 31 findings into 4 core problem categories and stated the insights of the needs of stakeholders who use wheelchairs in terms of the in-store shopping experience.
Unreachable shelves
Obstacles on way
Motorized carts
Checkout process
People in wheelchairs want to
shop in their own customized wheelchairs instead of using the motorized carts provided by stores
because
they do not trust to leave their expensive customized wheelchairs with other people.
People in wheelchairs do not want to
overly rely on online grocery shopping
because
they want to keep their independence.
People in wheelchairs want to
control the shopping cart effortlessly and easily
because
If they place the basket on their laps, the basket would get heavier as they put more and more items into it.
The path of self-checkout channel is too narrow to our users to proceed self-checkout, especially when self-checkout channel is crowed.
People who use wheelchairs usually have customized ones. However, most stores do not provide a designated space for users to store their expensive customized wheelchairs, forcing them to hold their shopping baskets on their laps.
Motorized shopping carts in stores are too deep and far away for people in a sitting position to grab items in and out from the shopping cart during shopping and doing checkout process.
The weight of the shopping cart is getting heavier as the user puts items in it. The motorized function of attachable shopping carts allows our users to easily control the shopping cart.
We reached out to Cathlene Hardy Hanson, the project director of the Indiana Institute on Disability and Community and the mother of a 28-year-old cerebral palsy patient to dive more into this topic and inquire feedback of our design and more information about our stakeholders.
"During traditional checkout, I tried (to have a good experience) but it was miserable, I was getting in people's way and it was aggravating."
"It's (smart cart checkout) gonna work better than the self-checkout one because you don't have to call every now and then to reset (in the self-checkout)."
"There is no way I would've gone through the stupid self-checkout when I shop with my son (a cerebral palsy patient)."
"You should also consider people who can use one hand or both hands or none at all, maybe your solution is also helpful for elder people with stroke."
"There are different kinds of wheelchairs and they come in different sizes, so try to think of how you would also make your solution to fit them all."
In this project, the feedback from the project director of the Indiana Institute on Disability and Community was very insightful and offered a different perspective from non-typical users (carers of people with disabilities). However, this study lacks the feedback from main users.
In addition, although sketching might be a material that good enough to communicate between designers, however, if we want to reach out to our users who are not designers to evaluate our design. Perhaps storyboards would be a good tool to explain design concepts and help users understand the scenario we were addressing.
Download the detailed documentation
Bright, A. K., & Coventry, L. (2013). Assistive technology for older adults: Psychological and socio-emotional design requirements. In Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on PErvasive Technologies Related to Assistive Environments (PETRA '13) (pp. 1-4). Association for Computing Machinery. doi: https://doi.org/10.1145/2504335.2504344
Borg, J., Larsson, S., & Östergren, P. (2011). The right to assistive technology: for whom, for what, and by whom? Disability & Society, 26(2), 151–167. doi:10.1080/09687599.2011.5438
Stumbo, N. J., Martin, J. K., & Hedrick, B. (2009). Assistive technology: Impact on education, employment, and independence of individuals with physical disabilities. Journal of Vocational Rehabilitation, 30(2), 99–110. doi: https://doi.org/10.3233/jvr-2009-0456
Hurst, A., & Tobias, J. (2011). Empowering individuals with do-it-yourself assistive technology. The Proceedings of the 13th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility - ASSETS ’11. doi:10.1145/2049536.2049541
