Grocery Shopping Toolkit for Children

The Problem Space

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Grocery shopping is more than just a routine task—it’s a learning opportunity for children, especially tweens (ages 9-12). Through secondary research and user studies (observations and interviews with families at Walmart), we found that tweens actively engage in shopping by comparing prices, reading labels, and making decisions. However, they lack structured tools to learn financial responsibility and healthy decision-making while shopping. This insight shaped our design goal: to create an interactive grocery toolkit that fosters learning, engagement, and decision-making for tweens.

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Designing the Solution

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Using affinity mapping, journey mapping, and Crazy 8s ideation, we developed a hands-on grocery toolkit that includes:

• ‍A Grocery List & Budgeting Tool – Helps tweens track spending and prioritize purchases.‍
• Store Map & Navigation Guide – Improves spatial awareness and efficiency in shopping.‍
• Know Your Product Sheet – Encourages understanding of nutrition labels.‍
• Fresh Produce Selection Game – Teaches kids how to pick quality fruits and vegetables.

Our design emphasized high visual aesthetics, clear typography, and engaging illustrations to make learning fun and intuitive.

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Experience Mapping our Solution

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🔗 Experience Mapping

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Impact & Next Steps

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Tested with tweens in a real-world Walmart setting, our toolkit proved to be engaging and effective in teaching budgeting and product awareness. Parents appreciated its educational value, but usability tests highlighted the need for simplified instructions and additional tools like a calculator for budgeting.

To enhance usability, we plan to minimize text-heavy content, introduce interactive elements, and improve store navigation features. Future iterations may explore a digital version of the toolkit to increase accessibility and engagement.

"Why Kids? Why Grocery Stores?"

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We were presented with an open-ended design challenge: to enhance the shopping experience for customers. Through hours of covert observation at Walmart, Target, and other grocery stores, we noticed that children often feel bored or disengaged during shopping trips. Recognizing that supermarkets offer rich learning opportunities around products, pricing, nutrition, and financial literacy, we saw a chance to create a meaningful experience. By adding playful challenges and interactive activities, we aimed to transform routine shopping into an engaging educational journey for children.

Process Overview

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From Observation to Insights

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We began with an exploration of Walmart Supercenter and shadowed shoppers (families) throughout their experience. Below is the affinity mapping of our observations.

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We then shortlisted families as our target group and did interviews with 6 families, along with a mix of unobtrusive and participant observations (~30 participants) in our next trip.

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The Key Takeaways

• Families tend to treat grocery shopping trips on the weekend as opportunities to spend time together.
• Parents educate their children about product quality, price, physical qualities, nutritional value, and expiration dates. They teach young children the names of items too.
• Parents want to make their children financially responsible and make their older children help them select items and make the grocery store list.
• Young children are generally put in carts and do not have much autonomy.
• Young kids usually cause chaos in stores. They are placated through toys, snacks, and mothers holding their hands or picking them up.
• Siblings tend to copy each other. Younger kids especially copy their older siblings.
• Children (especially 9-11 year olds) tend to help their parents shop and negotiate about item purchases.
• Mothers are generally responsible for shopping and they tend to ask children for their opinion on items. Hence, showing they want their children to be more active in this experience.
• Children tend to wander off in the Toys section but stick to their parents in the Fresh Produce sections.
• The purchasing power of kids was observable as parents also agreed that they tend to spend more when they come to stores with kids. But they do not buy whatever the kid wants.

From the Research Desk

We conducted our secondary research across four ker areas: children as consumers, cognitive development, life skills education, and learning in co-shopping. Key insights included the following:

• In Western families, children often experience a negotiation-based family structure, fostering greater autonomy.
• Grocery shopping is commonly leveraged as an educational moment, allowing children to learn skills like sensory-based produce selection and to develop analytical abilities in assessing prices and nutritional value.
• Shopping trips serve as valuable opportunities for younger children to grow their vocabulary and general knowledge.
• Parents are likely to spend more when shopping with children, who may directly or indirectly influence purchasing decisions.
• Children, especially those between 4 and 11, have a considerable impact on family shopping choices.
• Technological tools may be less effective for very young children due to differing stages of cognitive and emotional development; instead, interventions should remain simple and grounded in tangible concepts.

User Persona and Ideating

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From the Crazy 4s

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Following our Crazy 4s ideation session, we categorized our ideas into three key areas: Financial Responsibility, Nutritional Awareness, and Soft Skills. We incorporated these concepts into various activities within our toolkit and began creating low-fidelity sketches for each category.

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The Final Toolkit

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The following section annotates and explains the activities within our proposed grocery toolkit in a sequential manner, and highlights the implicit transfer of skills during each.

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Step 1:

Step 2:

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Step 3:

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Step 4:

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Step 5:

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Step 6:

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Putting It to the Test: What Users Had to Say

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We conducted our testing with three children in a real-world setting at Walmart, allowing them to interact with our play-kit while shopping alongside their parents. This was followed by a semi-structured interview and a brief survey to assess participants' satisfaction with the grocery shopping toolkit.

• Survey results indicated that both participants found the toolkit enjoyable and engaging.
• They gained insights into how to interpret product labels, enhancing their understanding of nutrition and pricing. For example, Participant 1 mentioned learning the distinction between unit price and retail price.
• The toolkit introduced a playful method for managing money using stickers, making the concept of budgeting more relatable and enjoyable. Participant 2 conveyed better understanding in managing her budget and grocery list.
• The children utilized the store map, which helped them develop spatial awareness and planning skills while shopping.

Next Steps

Based on our evaluation, we identified several design opportunities to enhance the usability of our toolkit, informed by observations and participant feedback:

• Users required additional support for complex calculations. Incorporating a small calculator into the toolkit could help participants manage mathematical tasks independently.
• The 'Know Your Product' sheet contained excessive text, making it difficult for participants to comprehend the instructions. To improve usability, we propose using visuals to convey key information and breaking down instructions into concise steps for easier understanding.
• Parent feedback indicated a need for additional resources, such as sheets introducing seasonal fruits and vegetables. This could also include information on Walmart’s offers and stickers to educate children about value-for-money products. Additionally, sections mapping out concepts like rollback offers and deals would support parents in teaching important financial literacy skills.
• To improve navigation within the store, we suggest simplifying the map by including a list of product categories for each zone. This would help participants quickly locate the items they need, making their shopping experience more intuitive.

Documentation

🔗 Project Documentation
🔗 Project Presentation