Yo
A yogurt vending machine
About
Everyone loves yogurt, but how can we design a better yogurt experience? During our exploration, we discovered a long-standing, long-ignored fact — Yogurt can only be purchased at certain spots, such as supermarkets and cafes. Our goal is to design a solution that allows consumers to purchase yogurt in a wider variety of places, whenever they need it.
Date
2018
Duration
1 week
Design Approach
User Research / Test / Prototype
Team
Final Prototype
An automatic, interactive yogurt vending machine that can be placed in any public space. Customers can customize flavors and toppings based on personal preferences.
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Prompt Analysis
When we are talking about yogurt, what are we actually thinking about? We started with this question and brainstormed the answers. The question was extended to detailed questions.
The key questions to be researched:
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When we say yogurt, what kind of "yogurt" product are we actually talking about?
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What are certain kinds of "yogurt" used for? Snacks or meal?
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Where can we get certain kinds of "yogurt"?
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Why can't we get them elsewhere?
Yogurt Products
We went to the local mall to explore the different experiences. We interviewed the regular customers and staff in the mall about their preference when purchasing yogurt. We found that people have a variety of understandings of yogurt as a food. Most of the people recommended us to go to the CVS downstairs. Some people thought we meant greek yogurt; some people thought about the froyo shop. One staff even directed us to Orange Julius, because she thought we were asking about beverage with yogurt in it.
Discovery
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To most of the people, yogurt still means the pre-packaged yogurt sold in grocery store.
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Some staff thought about yogurt-related desserts/beverage like froyo and smoothie. But if we made it clear that we want just yogurt, they tend to point us to CVS or tell us there is no yogurt in the mall.
What does yogurt mean to you?
We asked the following questions to 25 people around us.
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When do you usually eat yogurt?
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What kind of yogurt do you usually eat?
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What occasion do you find most appropriate to eat yogurt? Meal / Snack / Dessert / other?
11
9
5
Breakfast
Dining out dessert
Snack
Discovery
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Yogurt is used for all kinds of occasion!
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When people eat yogurt as breakfast and snack, they are either at home or at a dinning hall. That is to say, people usually eat yogurt at the site where it is stored.
Location
As mentioned above, most of the people we asked at the mall pointed us to CVS. Beside CVS, there are Pinkberry (froyo) and Orange Julius (smoothie) where people could find yogurt-related products. There is a Froyo World on the top of Providence college hill. Starbucks also has limited choice of pre-packaged yogurts.
Yogurt hard for customers to discover. The was not much storage and the staff said there was not many of them sold.
We marked the location of all these places (including the three grocery store) and analyzed it. To Providence consumers, they are located far away from each other, especially for the places where regular yogurt is offered.
We excluded Starbucks because it's not a shop neither dedicated to yogurt or has a wide range of products.
Discovery
There are only five places where customers could get yogurt / yogurt-related products.
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Whole Foods and Eastside Market are big grocery stores where customers usually need a car to go to.
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The mall locates in down town, but there are not many residents living around it. Froyo world locates at the heart of college hill, but it only offers Froyo.
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The CVS near Brown University's campus is the only place that's close and offers yogurt. The problem is it only has limited choices (just like the one in the mall).
Why can't we get it elsewhere?
We wondered why we can't purchase yogurt like we purchase froyo. At first, we thought it's the nature of yogurt itself, since people usually take yogurt as something they have as a side for meal.
But after we combined the factor of location and eating habits. We soon discovered that what limited yogurt from being a social food that could be offered anywhere (like froyo) is temperature and storage.
Temperature
Temperature is the most important factor in yogurt storage. Customers fear yogurt may go bad easily.
Storage
Yogurt expires easily without proper storage. That's also decided by temperature, sealing and moisture.
Assumption
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Yogurt needs a specific standard for storage. Low temperature and enclosed / semi-enclosed storage environment is crucial.
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Staff is not necessary since customers could help themselves.
Summary
The research touched different aspects that are related to "yogurt experience". The result is comprehensive. Based the discovery came from research, we want to generate a summary of pain points that could help us to find potential design opportunities. During this process, we created a persona to help us imagine the scenarios for yogurt purchasing.
Remy
25 yr
Persona 1:
Remy, Brown University Student
Remy
As a CS graduate student who devotes most of his life in computer lab, Remy buys snack and drink between each meal. Most of them are from school vending machine.
Because
There are 3 vending machines in the building! All of them are close to the labs and offices Remy goes everyday. The shop down stairs on the 1st floor is too far away for a full-time lab resident.
But
After a while, Remy realizes he needs yogurt instead of junky snack, but that requires him to go all the way to the dinning hall. After a month's round trip, he decides the same blueberry yogurt is so boring that it doesn't worth such a long time.
Anrui
24 yr
Persona 2:
Anrui, Local Cafe Staff
Preference
Price
Factors/Persona
Location
Flavor
Quality
Anrui
Any
Customizable
Healthy
Low
Remy
Close
Any
Healthy
Any
Design Opportunities
Although we see a lot of pain points that people are going through, we have to admit the current yogurt experience is good under the current context. People already got used to purchase a great amount of yogurt at grocery store every weekend, or buy yogurt from cafe/dining hall/convenience store with a limited choice. Instead of overhauling people's established habit, we decided to create a similar but more dedicated yogurt experience, which is...
Accessible
Our design should reduce the time cost for people to get yogurt.
Customizable
Our design should cover different preference towards flavor.
Economical
Our design should provide more transparency and flexibility about quantity and price.
Other than the above three aspects, we think we still need to focus on one very import aspect...
Freshness
The most fundamental factor we need to gurantee.
Our design needs to give customers a sense of freshness and safety.
Final Solution
Yo the yogurt vending machine, that makes yogurt with your own choice of topping and flavor for you.
Vending machine can improve the yogurt experience in ways:
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Modern vending machines have the ability to keep food at a low temperature. Ben and Jerry's is already using them!
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Vending machine runs by itself. There is no space and labor limitation.
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Yogurt brands could get more brand exposure with multiple machines set up in public places
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It's easier and quicker for customers to purchase yogurt than in a grocery store. Customers could purchase whenever and wherever they need.
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With interactive OS embeded, customers could see the data change in real time when they choose different toppings. Data includes price, calorie and popular combination, etc.
Prototype Design
Initial Attempt
How will people respond to a yogurt vending machine?
Will they have interest?
Will they accept it as a part of their daily life spontaneously?
Will they have any conern towards such thing in a public space?
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Before we go deep into details, these are the questions we concerned about. It's rare to see a vending machine selling fresh products in a public space, so our first step is to test people's reaction towards such machine. We imagined how it is going to look like. The following miniature model shows our thought.
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This model focuses on the transparency of the whole vending experience. The whole process runs from the top to the bottom:
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User picks his/her choice on the screen first.
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The "selection" area shows the actual product.
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Once user confirms the choice, the machine will mix the yogurt.
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Yogurt will be dispensed on the bottom.
We even thought beyond the current technology limit. What if people could see through the vending machine and check how yogurt is made behind it?
Feedback
"The idea of transparency is good. But the see-through feature seems too unrealistic."
"The touch screen is too high for normal people. It doesn't have to be a "top to bottom" process to show transparency."
"I like how yogurt is mixed in front of you. It might give people a sense of freshness even though it's more like a performance."
The feedback we received after our pitch focuses on the "top - bottom" user flow and how to show transparency. We decided to get rid of the "see-through" part and emphasize on the mixing process.
Sketch User Flow
Our next step is to design Due to the limitation of a physical interactive menu, we added a confirm step so that the person behind vending machine would be able to know what ingredients do customers want exactly.
Front Panel Overview
We constructed the cardboard prototype in 6 hours. The design includes interactive menu, service area and food sample display area.
Topping Display
This are displays all the toppings and yogurt.
Interactive Menu
Buttons and knobs were used to simulate an actual menu.
Serving Area
Two cups will be served for toppings and yogurt in this area.
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Making Process
Final Prototype
User Testing
We tested our mockup on Brown University’s campus. We have two of our group members run the machine from behind. One member stood outside to explain the basics to passengers. There was a camera set up from a distance to record the interaction.
User’s were asked to interact with our vending machine. Guidance were provided at the least level. We are glad to see the curiosity from many people. Even though the process takes long due to physical limitation, people still expressed great interest because they had never seen a machine that made yogurt before.
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User testing
User interacting with our machine
User Testing
Every customer who tested our mockup were asked to provide feedbacks after they received yogurt. We asked customers various questions, including…
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Customer’s feeling towards this machine
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Their yogurt preference
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What do they want from a yogurt vending machine
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Their concerns during the purchasing process
“It looks dramatic!”
“I look how I could see my yogurt coming out of the machine.”
“That makes sure I won’t eat all of them at once.”
“You can never control how much you want to add in Pinkberry.”
“…So I could carry it around without worrying if the toppings are in there for too long.”
“I usually carry a cup of yogurt with me. But I have to toss it because I usually forget to eat. ”
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The appreciation mainly goes to the performance and psychological effect. Like how the yogurt was mixed in front of them and how it makes them feel good/in control.
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The concerns still focus on how to keep our product fresh. Even though traditional toppings' counter doesn't allow customers to change/regret their decisions, it does guarantee the freshness because it offers customers a large field to see the toppings.
Next Step, please come back!