Contextual Inquiry

Process

During the course of the past two weeks, our team successfully interviewed a total of 19 participants, analyzed the responses and created a well-structured affinity diagram. The process started with brainstorming on the interview questionnaire. We reached out to participants followed by analyzing and interpreting those.

Finally, we went through an 8-hour process (that spanned across two days) of creating affinity diagram by sorting, grouping and re-grouping the sticky notes.

Workflow

20th September '21

Met In-Person to discuss the concept Contextual Inquiry and the process we need to follow. Joint study session to review the Study Guide, Holtzblatt 2005 and video lectures.

22nd September '21

Met In-Person for brainstorming session on interview guide and further plans of action. Created a Trello Board to organize and distribute work among team members.

23rd September '21

Joined the Office Hours of the TA to clarify doubts regarding the project and asked for advice and resources for Milestone 2.

25th September '21

Met In-Person and finalized interviewee list and revisited Milestone 1. Edited and included missing elements from the website and read up on other resources (as advised by the TA) pertaining to Contextual Inquiry.

25th- 28th September '21

Each member conducted 4-5 interviews and transcribed them in a proper manner.

29th-30th September '21

Met In-Person to discuss interviews conducted and interpret the data appropriately. Worked on the Affinity Notes and the Affinity Diagram. Edited the website to include information about the interviews and the other requisites for Milestone 2.

1st October '21

Met In-Person to review the work done and fine tuned elements of the website and the Affinity Diagram.

Demographics

The majority of the interviews were conducted in-person and a few through telephonic conversation. We were able to reach out to participants from varied demographics. The participants are aged between 21 to 25, among which 84% are full-time students and 16% work a part-time job while being enrolled as full time students. Out of the students we interviewed, 21% are locals and 79% are International including students from Bangladesh, Turkey, Taiwan, India, Nepal and China.

Questions

The individual team members conducted 4-5 in-depth interviews each, with a total of 19 interviews and asked questions related to demographics, grocery shopping habits and trends.

Here is a sample of the questions that we asked our interviewees regarding their thoughts and opinions on shopping.

Do you prefer shopping Online/In Person?
How many times do you visit grocery stores per month?
On an average, how much do you spend every time you visit a grocery store?
What stores do you frequently visit for groceries?
What is the mode of transport you use to travel to stores?
When it comes to shopping would you consider yourself to be Cost Effective or Time Effective? Why?
Do you find yourself comparing brands and items across stores to get the most cost effective item?
Do you face any troubles with shopping in-person that you would want a solution to?
How useful do you think our application would be to you?

Affinity Diagram

Following is the link to the affinity diagram created on Miro. Clicking on the project name towards the bottom of the embedded link provides access to the entire board.

Alternatively, the board can be accessed here.

Interpretation

We got a lot of insights from the interviews and interpretation sessions. The interviews brought up many of new features that the users want in the app and helped us find out the most relevant features needed by the users, like recommendations, real-time store updates, budget management, etc. We also found some new factors which we had previously overlooked, like a lot of our users, focus not only on cost but on quality as well, and some are loyal to brands. A lot of people also shared details about how they shop, what factors affect product selection, why they prefer shopping online or in-person, and what problems they face while grocery shopping. All in all, it gave us a lot of information about our users to set the direction for the development of the app.

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