GroceryGrab: Money Management For College Students!

This project was designed by me and two fellow JMU School of Media Arts and Design (SMAD) classmates. This application was designed to solve problems when grocery shopping & money management for college students residing within campus, or outside of campus in James Madison University.

Problem and Vision

Problem

There are numurous students within JMU that do not aquire a meal plan throughout their JMU career, therefore, it is difficult to manage their finances when going out to purchase groceries without the assistance from their parents/guardians. It is difficult to find healthy and affordable meals that is within a stuents budget when they are on their own. This inspired us to develop an application that can help serve the student, as well as find a solution to their nutritional needs.

Vision

The goal of this project was to create a mobile application that can help assist JMU students when going out to shop for groceries. We developed meal plans, money management features, as well as incorporating a recipe finder based on the students budget. This will help student create strategies of when to plan their next meal trip and manage their budget in a more efficient way.

GroceryGrab High-Fidelity Prototype Learn More

Design Process

Collecting Data

We started our process by viewing popular grocery applications such as: Amazon, Instacart, Flipp, Grocery Pal, and more. We collected popular color combinations, accessibility data, and the overall navigation throughout these applications. Wanting to branch out more, we conducted many user interviews, and mockups throughout this project.

User Research

Our first step was to create user personas to be in the mindset of a JMU student. We then proceeded to create wireframes, card sorting, journey maps, to gather more information. During the first couple of weeks, we created a low-fidelity mockup in Adobe XD, and interviewed JMU students through Zoom to see how they interacted with the mockup. As time went on, we solidified what students wanted and improved our navigation system. We decided it was best to incorporate a grocery delivery application so that it would be easier if JMU students had their groceries delivered since most student did not aquire their own form of transportation. We decided to incorporate Instacart to our application so that they can decide whether to have their groceries delivered or not.