Comprehensive Analysis of “ideo Shopping Cart Project”

                           Comprehensive Analysis of “IDEO Shopping Cart Project”        
                                                             Anil Kumar Sah

Bus 540 Organizational Behavior

Professor: Shirley Chuo

Westcliff University

September 27, 2016

                                                Abstract

IDEO is pronounced as “eye-Dee-oh”. It is an award –winning global design company that takes a human-centered, design based technique to help organizations in the public and private sectors innovate and grow. It has new ways to serve and support people by uncovering latent needs, behaviors and desires. IDEO designed many things from dulls to best medical equipments. In this 'VIDEO shopping cart project', the ABC television visited the IDEO, the best designer company in USA and  said to the chair person of IDEO that take something old and familiar say shopping cart and redesign it completely in just five days. The idea of the ABC television is to show the process of innovation and product development i.e. how new idea is generated in teams. The main objective is to time specification i.e. redesign shopping cart wit in five days to reduce the number of trolleys missing, enhance the reputation of IDEO and reduce the number of child accidents(22000 child accidents/year). In redesign of the shopping cart, the technique used is interviewing users, discussion with purchasers and repairers.

The secondary market research is done to identify the necessity of the product. Teams were divided into groups and each groups developed their own prototype. Again they communicate with each other to incorporate the missing component in their prototype. And finally the final design was developed for the shopping cart demonstrated at the grocery store.

Comprehensive Analysis of Shopping Cart

        Shopping trolley theft is a very common phenomenon in the USA. More than 1.8 million trolleys are stolen in the USA every year. One trolley costs about $100 to $300 so total losses to stores and consumers are about $175,000,000 per year. To avoid such a big loss, grocery store decides to prevent customer from taking the trolleys outside. When a customer checks out from the grocery store the bag boys loads all the items into paper bags loads these paper bags into large plastic bins. Each bin has unique number displayed on its side. These bins are taken by bag boys and loaded into ramp and sent outside. The customer walks out to his car and drives to where the bag boys wait with the bins. Bag boys identify the bins with the help of the plastic sheets. And take the groceries from the bins and load them to the customer’s car.

The IDEO “Video shopping cart project” is the redesign of the some old and familiar shopping trolley represents the alternative solution to the problem faced by US people. In 2000, ABC visited the IDEO firm in California and propose them to redesign a shopping trolley so that

A better solution to the problem can be found.

In my opinion, ABC television wanted to show an example of how innovation process takes place in successful firms. The item considered for redesign was shopping trolley. The main challenge of this project was they had to make a design within the specified time period i.e. within five days.

Design Process

        The design team approached the project by:

1. Observing grocery trolleys in use
2. Watching, meeting, speaking and interviewing with users, buyers and repairers.

According to David Kelley, “the main idea is to find the real experts. The people who are really getting the info are out in the field meeting with people."

The Problems associated with the shopping trolley are:

a. Safety: More than 22,000 children met a shopping trolley related hospitalized accidents.

b. Shopping practices:  It’s better to leave the trolley at the end of the isle, go and select the item, return to the trolley then move to the end of next isle. It avoids the pushing of trolley up and down.

c. Paying for purchases at the checkout:  A lot of time spends by standing in line.

d. Searching for products:  Customers have to spend some extra time in searching for a particular product. The homeless people use trolleys as running closets.

The mobility of the shopping trolley with basket makes it an attractive and affordable way for homeless people to transport their goods. The shopping trolley basket has the metal grating make for a barbecue grill. Therefore, the challenge was to eliminate this aimless functionality without making the shopping trolley less effective for its proposed users i.e. customers.

The anti theft issues had to be implemented in the redesign but some other major design should be added to the shopping cart.

David Kelley said that designers were looking for some "wild and buildable" idea.

Any new redesign that reduced the mobility of the trolley may create a problem to the some other issues. So, the design team came with the idea that makes the basket of trolley separable from its frame. “Without the basket it has no value because you cannot carry anything in it.”

(Peter Skillman, designer).

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