While I didn’t have any actual personas for any supermarkets, I thought I could at least create one based on some assumptions (and from what I knew about some friends) to help keep the design user-focused.

I thought that a parent juggling family commitments would be a good challenging persona, and male, as there is some evidence that males report lower levels of environmentally-friendly behaviour.

From these various sources, I could see the scope of ‘sustainable’ aspects for the Planet Friendly range :

• Sustainable packaging
• Compostable/recyclable packaging
• Organic ingredients/low chemicals
• Plant-based food, including milk and meat alternatives, etc.
• Rechargeable and reusable items

I crystalised these down to three and wrote a one-liner for each, humanising any corporate/designer speak for laymen’s language, and drawing inspiration from the answers above.

• Sustainable materials — Sustainably sourced ingredients, parts, and/or packaging
• Recyclable waste -Easy recycling of what you don’t use
• Kind to life — Fair work, animal welfare, and less harm to nature

With this, I created an onboarding modal, utilising authenticity and simplicity, to help shape an initial approach for early rapid testing.

Design V1 (Early Concept Test)—Simple introduction and category view

I had a strong assumption that information displayed on the product, at the decision-making moment, was most important. This sort of informing and enabling at a product level could also add to the use of apps like Get Greener that direct users to websites for sustainable shopping.

Feedback

• “By the time you start shopping, you will want it to be done asap. The other thing is, I read food labels so having to read another thing in that moment would be a pain. I would have more tolerance if the information was served upfront before I begin the shop.”
• “I want the decision-making process to be quick”
• “In usual contexts, frankly if my sustainability impact is not measured, incentivised or punished, I only look for the price and product quality/reputation — and would ignore these icons”

Design V2 — Sustainability modes and product swapping

At first, it seemed my assumption was way off, that information at the point of purchase wasn’t impactful to changing behaviour. But thinking more in context, we weren’t necessarily just asking customers to choose one product over the other, we were also asking them to swap pre-made choices.

I needed to explore a simple product-swapping mechanism.

Planet Friendly shopping modes

To give users a choice of how and when they wanted to receive recommendations, I offered 3 shopping modes to choose from (or any combination).

1. While browsing—utilising in situ Planet Friendly recommendations
2. In cart—utilising in situ recommendations and product swapping after product selection to review all at one
3. In saved/favourite lists—utilising the same in situ recommendations and product swapping UX as for the ‘In cart’ mode but for reviewing later

Delivery options

Of course, purchasing is only one part of the user experience, there’s also delivery — devise ways you can deliver more efficiently to reduce emissions and offer a reward for users who choose this planet-friendly option, such as planting a tree in their name.