ICA Tillsammans
Business Developer Program 2019
Project developed for the User Experience course
About the project
In the User Experience course, we had the opportunity to develop a project for the ICA Sweden. With around 1,300 stores and a market share of around 36%, the company is the leading grocery retailer in Sweden (source).
During the course, we had the opportunity to explore different technologies and ideation methodologies. One of the most remarkable lectures was presented by Joe MacLeod and the concept of “endineering”. McLeod is the author of the books Ends. and Endineering, and yes, they are worth the reading. We also had the opportunity to attend workshops offered by the ICA lab team, Another Tomorrow, and the Centigo consulting agency.
Our team consisted of Tamela Hedström, Sebastian Paez, Patrick Doran, Adrian Önnerdal, and me.
Framing an opportunity
This course project aimed to think about trends in tech, rethinking food and groceries consumption and/or new ways of providing goods for your house.
Even with some scope, the possibilities were yet overwhelming. We started the project by doing desk research on tech and behaviour trends, but not only. We also explored and investigated struggles that were still left unattended. Could we combine new solutions to old issues?
We noticed during our field research that the everyday routine is full of small errands. In a place like Stockholm, for example, it’s pretty common for people to go several times to supermarkets, drugstores, and post offices (mostly to get goods bought online). Many people don’t have cars, so they rely on public transportation. The impact is that they usually don’t transport large grocery bags. In summary, a significant number of people do frequent errands to get small amounts of groceries.
What if, instead of each person going for these errands, we could build a “network” of people that could help each other? Someone going to the same place you need to go, or someone just passing by one of these places and could get you what you need. A neighbour, a friend that is passing by, your roommate?
This could help reduce the carbon footprint of people moving around the city. Also, this could be a great help for people with some mobility limitations. And last but not least, the platform could also create strong community bonds. Based on this concept, we ideate ICA Tillsammans. On this platform, people could map their trusted network, connect to selected friends and family, and share errands with them.
Building the MVP
After some interviews, we identified potential users interested in adopting our solution. Based on these profiles, we drafted the features and interactions on Sketch, creating an interactive prototype. To test the concept and prototype, we also produced role-playing in video format, where we simulated the user flows.
Outcomes
This project’s most significant challenge was conciliating the different views and standpoints. As we had conflicting visions for the product and struggled to communicate within the team, we needed to find ways to overcome these barriers.
Hyper Island focus strongly on teamwork, and the situations we faced during the project taught us a lot about conflicts. We tried feedback tools and team-building exercises to improve the quality of our interactions. As a result, we could deliver a project that the entire team was proud of.