Personas
For my HF770 Prototyping Course at Bentley, my team was tasked with creating personas that experienced our problem "grocery shopping is difficult for busy people."
The personas were created through interviews and surveys via Google forms of the team's friends and family. I reached out to my roommates and my college sorority network to answer a food related survey (created by my teammate, Kanika Banka) and received over twenty responses from this group.
From these interviews and surveys, we identified three personas: the student, the professional, and the family mom. Most of the individuals I recruited for interviews and surveys fit into the student and professional persona. I conducted additional research for the family woman persona through internet research, particularly looking at facebook groups and forums such as reddit. In my group, I created the student persona and the family woman persona, shown below.
Student Persona
Demographics
25 years old
Female
Single
No children
Pursuing a Master's degree
Needs
Stay healthy
Prioritize school
Manage time
Goals
Budget money
Spend less time shopping
Improved Health
Contexts
Buying food in store
Buying food through online apps
Going to restaurants
Going to starbucks often (and buying snacks)
Tasks
Creating shopping list
Looking at advertisements
Traveling to store
Being in the store, choosing between different food options
Budgeting money
Checkout line
Tracking diet/calories in and out
Environment
Comfortable using a computer and smartphone.
Uses fitbit to track her fitness
Occasionally goes out with friends socially for restaurants, drinks, and meals.
Pain Points
Spending money
Choosing foods (too much choice)
Out of stock foods
Spending longer than expected in store/traveling to store
Long checkout line
Quote
“I need to spend less on food”
Summary
Sarah is a busy masters student who is enrolled full time and has a part time job. She enjoys cooking, but often settles on making food that may be unhealthy, simply because it is fast and easy to cook. When she does cook healthily, she cooks in larger quantities to budget throughout the week. She goes out to eat with friends for full means 1-3 times a week, but visits Starbucks often. She uses Mint.com to manage her food budget. She is a little bit stressed when visiting the store and having to choose between so many options, having to consider price. During college, she always ate at the cafeteria so learning how to manage food is new and difficult. Sarah is overwhelmed with school work. She is constantly working with group projects and needs to check her phone often.
Scenario
Sarah dreads her weekly trip to the grocery store. She doesn’t have a car, so she either has to take an uber pool, which can take a while, or walk 30 minutes to the closest store. Her closest grocery store is also expensive and once she gets to the store, she is overwhelmed by options she doesn’t necessarily want. She usually sticks to a few foods- bread, milk, veggies, and meat, which she keeps on a list on her iphone. When she gets to the bread aisle, she has trouble deciding whether she wants to go with her usual bread or with a bread with more fiber. She wanders around the store, buying the cheapest food she can find of the items on her list, and is happy to find some stuff on sale. However, she is upset when she finds out that the store is out of her favorite flavor of Ben and Jerry’s. After spending longer than she would have liked deciding what to buy, she heads to the cashier, checks out and makes her way home through uber pool.
Family Mom Persona
Demographics
36 years old
Female
Married for 6 years
2 children, one 6 and one 2
Needs
Stay healthy
Keep family healthy
Cook large, complex meals
Manage family’s different schedules
Goals
Budget money
Spend less time shopping
Make everything healthier
Make everyone happy with what they eat
Contexts
Buying food in store
Buying food through online apps
Having potlucks with friends
Tasks
Creating shopping list
Looking at advertisements
Traveling to store
Being in the store, choosing between different food options
Budgeting money
Checkout line
Tracking diet/calories in and out
Make lunch for husband, lunch for son
Look up recipes
Environment
Comfortable using a computer.
Has a smartphone, but not the newest model. Constantly in contact with children/husband
She is constantly moving/travelling on errands from place to place.
Pain Points
Complicated diets (son is lactose intolerant, husband is vegetarian, and mom herself is trying to lose weight)
Food expiring
Spending money
Choosing foods (too much choice)
Picky eaters
Out of stock foods
Spending longer than expected in store/traveling to store
Long checkout line
Quote
“It’s difficult to find the time to make foods for everyone but I get the job done.”
Summary
Jill is a full-time mom. She has two young children only one of which is old enough to go to school. She spends time in her day taking her son to and from school and taking him to extracurricular activities. At night she cooks a good variety of food for dinner and the family eats together. She does not get help in shopping or food prep from her family or friends, but often looks at recipes online. Her family loves her cooking and she puts in a lot of time and effort to please everyone.
Scenario
Jill makes her weekly drive to the grocery store with a handwritten list in hand. She goes through every aisle picking up what she needs. At this point, she has gone shopping so many times that she has arranged her list by what aisle she will shop in. She notes that her son wants a specific lunchables food item is popular among his friends. She continues on filling up almost the whole cart with staples as well as the specific things her family has requested. Many of the things she buys are meant to go in recipes and for packed lunch. She buys large quantities of food, knowing it’ll go fast in her family. The store is busy and she laughs because she wishes she could use the express line. She uses some coupons she got from the Sunday newspaper, is overall happy with her trip and she leaves.
