Design a Supermarket for older people.

Here's where I would start to answer this type of product design question.

Clarifying question - Age Group ? 65+

Assumption - Supermarket where grocery, fresh produce are sold like Safeway , Whole Foods etc. Supermarket specifically for Elderly people. 

Goal - The current supermarket is not customized for this segment. This is a significant market size that we want to address. 

Bus Obj. - Short Term we want to acquire more users and want to measure user adoption. Long term our goal is to make money from this supermarket and expand.

Customer Segment

1. Elderly people those who are fit and can still walk and do their shopping

2. Elderly people those who use wheelchair

3. Elderly people who shop with assistance from someone younger

I would like to Focus on the 1st user segment(Size)Parking, #3 can still shop in regular supermarket, for #2 we have to make significant changes. Once we get user adoption for #1 segment we can opt to extend it to 

Pain Points 

1. Parking - Sometime it is difficult to find a parking

2. Pushing Cart - Carts are heavy to push

3. Products not reachable in shelf

4. No place to sit or relax

5. Hard to search products

6. Instruction or Label too small to read

7. Carrying heavy items from Shelf to Cart

8. Rest Rooms

9. Carrying Grocery Bags to Cars

I will try to address pain point #2,#3,#5,#6 and #7

Solutions

1. Smart Carts

   1. Battery Operated Cart that you can ride

   2. Carts have sensors which automatically scans your items once you put on it. Less wait time at the checkout counter.

2. Shelf

   1. Height of the Shelf max 5 ft. 

   2. Don't put any item on the Bottom shelf or top shelf. It is hard for elderly peopl to either bend or reach the top shelf.

   3. Make it easier for Elderly people to pick items from the shelf without getting up from the cart.

3. Aisles

   1. Computer Touch Screen on each Aisle that has a Store Map and direction of Shelfs.

   2. Voice Assistant Service(Ask me anything) set up in every aisle, which takes your location from the machine that you are operating from and guides you to what you are looking for. For example - you are in Aisle 5 , for eggs, go straight and turn left etc.

4. Labels and Instructions

   1. Increase the font size of Labels and Instruction

   2. Smart Instructions - Each Aisle has its own announcements about what aisle are you in and what product you can find.

5. Checkout 

   1. Separate reserved checkout counters for Elderly. 

   2. Handheld Barcode scanners so elderly can be billed without picking any item out of the cart at the checkout counter.

Separate small section of a supermarket can be dedicated to Elderly people with products only bought by them. The Area can be closer to the entrance. 

Prioritization and Tradeoffs

Solution 1 - High Cost, hence will skip for the redesign initially

Solution 2 - Shelf redesigns are low effort and high impact and I will make it a part of initial redesign

Solution 3 - For 3a , not sure if every elderly person is comfortable with technology and touch screens typing. So rather I would install a voice assistant product(3(b)). It is easier to talk to a device and get instructions. 3b is a high cost and high impact feature plus in the long run we can make savings in service cost.

Solution 4 - 4a is easy to implement. I will skip 4b, it's a high cost design and plus I feel it will be an overkill. The aisles might get too noisy. 

Solution 5 - Medium Cost and High Impact feature. This design is already implemented in some stores like Costco.

Success Metrics

Acquisition and Adoption

1. Avg. No. of elderly people visiting the store per day(DoD, WoW etc).

2. Avg. No. of elderly people visiting the redesign section per day

Monetization

3. ARPU(Elderly People)

4. Avg. Cart Size in terms of no. of items and amount

Satisfaction 

1. CSAT or NPS Score

Counter Metrics

1. No. of Elderly people still spending time in regularly area

2. Avg. No of times agents are asked to help in elderly segment. 

Feature or Product Metrics

1. No of times Voice Assistant Product is used. 

My north star metric is “Avg. No. of elderly people visiting the store per day(DoD, WoW etc)”

Please Provide feedback. Will help me learn and improve.

What's the problem statement? We need to design a supermarket for seniors (60+ year olds)

Who are the users? Primary user segment is 60+ year olds; We should also consider the people who accompany them as the secondary users. For this discussion, I will focus on the primary users;

What are the user needs? 1) Groceries (e.g. Milk, Eggs, Bread, Greens, Fruits etc.) . 2) Household items such as Detergent, Paper towels, toilet tissues etc. 3) Pharmacy 4) Medical supplies e.g. Walking stick, wheel chair etc.

What's the solution? We primary focus on three areas 1) Convenience 2) Selection and Availability

Here are the features in each area that I would focus on building.

1a. 80% of the parking spaces should be reserved for elderly/people who need assistance. Make sure we have enough spaces to keep up with the peak hour rush.

1b. Enough availability of motorized shopping carts

1c. Ramps designed for accessibility

1d. Staff available to readily help the customers when in need

1e. Store layout considering accessiblity in mind; The height of the shelves should designed in such a way most of the folks can reach to them with limited assistance

1f. Orders by Phone or App and delivering items at the customer's door step.

2a. Selection of items is key; Focus on those items that are specific to senior needs e.g. adult diapers, medical supplies, medicines etc.

2b. Pharmacy is a must

2c. Fast food attached to super market is needed so customers have the option to buy ready made food for lunch/dinner

1. SuperMarket is basically is a big retail store of self service format where users pick things they want to purchase and then checkout. Is this fine?
2. Are we specifically focusing on offline stores? You can decide
3. This supermarket is for groceries including food items (fresh produce, frozen food, ready to eat, raw materials like cereals, pulses etc) is it fine? Yes
4. Who is trying to solve this problem? as in is it a govt. org? startup or a retail chain? A well established retail chain.
5. Why are they solving this problem? They have realized that this is a big opportunity and can serve as a competitive advantage as well.
6. Any specific grography for which this problem is being solved? U decide.. ok will consider India since I am well aware about the needs and it is also one of the most populous country where consumption is increasing since it is a developing country,

1. Elderly people who are living independently and running their households
   1. Elderly people who have special needs and are living in old age homes or with help staff.
   2. Elderly people who are managing everything on their own.
2. Elderly people living with their children where the household is mostly being run by the their sons/daughters

1. How to manage, track their spends as they have a limited pension via which they are running their homes. Want to budget their spends at the same time maintain their life style.
   1. S: High.
   2. R: Med
2. Super markets are huge, though they like to go spend time in grocery shopping as they have time at hand (retired people mostly) but traversing aisles  and then standing in checkout queues of a big super market week on week becomes tiring and exhausting experience
   1. S: high
   2. R: high
3. Ensuring everything is bought in one trip is difficult..often forget one or the other item and then have to go again mid week.. don't make lists etc... often make lists then forget where they had kept the list or forget tot ake the list along with them.
   1. S:med
   2. R: med
4. Once the items are bought, carrying them inside their home and then keeping everything at the right place is also a big time consuming task.
   1. S: low
   2. R: low

1. Develop an app with OCR capability which can easily scan the bills of the grocery purchase and analyse their spends and inform them if they are going overboard 
   1. I: med. might not have high accuracy and thus impact will not be high
   2. Effort : high
2. Keep users informed about latest offers that they can avail on grocery items via weekly offer message on their mobile device. One message per week since multiple messages becomes over bearing for them.
   1. Message would be personalized as per user purchase history and also based on the time of their visit. (usually there is a pattern that a person shops every month on sunday or weekly on saturday etc)
      1. I : high
      2. E: low

1. They can check availability of items with the store and then decide to visit the store.. via a whatsapp based call or chat. (not that conversant in using apps)
   1. I : med
   2. E: low but operational cost high
2. In the store, before each aisle, have kiosk where the users can swipe and check if the product they are looking for is currently available or not so that they go into the aisle only if it is available.
   1. I : med
   2. E: high
3. Self checkout mechanism --> kiosks present where users can tap the items and then pay for the amount via their credit card, debit cards or cash. (via barcode scanners.. if items not scanned then cameras present and on gates barcode scanners present which will catch)
   1. I - high
   2. E- high
4. Have option for elders to repeat their last purchase for groceries --> via kiosk accept fresh produce as that users usually want to select on their own.
   1. I - med
   2. E- high
5. While moving through the aisle, the price of the product, product details is shown via AR through mobile phones so that they don't have to bend in the aisles to pick up products and also with poor eyesight strain their eyes to check the price. With a mechanism to get the item without having to bend.
   1. I - high
   2. E - high