Costco-gain
“Costco Gain” is a project that aims to understand the problems of Costco customers and attempts to provide suitable and user friendly solution to deal with the bulk mass produced goods which users buy at Costco.
initial research
The reason for choosing to Costco as our location started with the initial idea of understanding wastage in a big box store or a wholesale market and identifying other key problems that its users might experience.
Type : Web Application
Design genre : Brand Design, Service Design
Duration : 14 weeks
Tools : HTML, InVision, Sketch, Illustrator, Premier Pro, Miro
Organization: Pratt Institute, 2018
On our visit to Costco, We were surprised to find out that food made in the bakery and ready-made aisle doesn’t usually go to waste whereas the bulk quantities of food is giving rise to a lot of packaging waste from its consumers.
identifying Problems
What bothered us more was the experience of shopping at Costco by itself, from the disadvantage of not having a car to the frustrating shopping experience inside the warehouse, having no space to shop and the chaotic way finding systems. The next step was to interview users in order to investigate their pain points and gain points.
the stakeholders
consumer reviews
User research
We interviewed 50 users of Costco to gain a better understanding of consumer issues.
Customer Journey Maps
User Persons
User Empathy Maps
DEBRIS TO DESIGN workshop
The next stage of research involved a workshop outside school for creating an awareness to make better use of the packaging waste. We went to Prospect park in Brooklyn with a bunch of boxes from Costco and engaged with people there to make interesting art out of it.
Prototyping
The final phase of the project was to accumulate all of the research that I did throughout the semester to propose a possible solution that could benefit the users of Costco. We designed an application that would help users of Costco resolve the following issues :
1) Car pool options for customers living in the same neighbourhood (Costco+Uber Collaboration)
2) Split Bulk Products with people
3) Find Recycling centers
4) Contact Costco Customer Service