Year
2015
Project
Continente online
Company
AppGeneration / External
Role
UI Designer
Continente App is an online supermarket purchase app that wanted to resemble as much as possible the actual process on the physical store.
I took part on the first instance of this project, back in 2015 as an external UI Designer working with AppGeneration, in what is now a slightly different app.
What is it + Users
What is Continente App?
Continente App is a supermarket online purchase app that wanted to resemble as much as possible the actual process on the physical store.
I took part on the first instance of this project, back in 2015 as an external UI Designer working with AppGeneration, in what is now a slightly different app.
The identified users for this project were mainly those who:
– already were accostumed to online shopping;
– were tech-savy;
– wanted to test-drive the home delivery of the supermarket;
– didn’t have time to go to the supermarket themselves.
This covers a very specific kind of customer, in the view of the research, which, translated into a persona, it would be a 35+ professional who was also a parent and had a very demanding work schedule. This would solve the main problem identified by the research.
On the other hand, it wasn’t meant for the habituès, who regularly shop in the physical supermarket, or that make occasional shopping on the smaller stores of the client – back then, they were known as Modelo Bom Dia – , or that make the month’s shopping all at once.
Design Problem
Problems to solve
In a time in which the client had different apps to different objectives, and the supermarket online stores were starting a trend on the Portuguese market, they wanted to start to create their online shopping app.
So, we understood that they wanted to emulate the process of shopping in the store to that online. This posed some issues, especially on the integration with the user flow with the metaphor of an actual run to the supermarket and the complexity on the amount of available products.
Continente App
Design Approach
01 Seamless Transition
Everytime it was possible, we were to transition from the physical store to the digital store in the more seamless and engaging way possible, reproducing the supermarket aisles, with different type shelves, according to the product, and a very similar shopping cart and experience. This app was supposed to integrate or replace Continente Listas, a shopping-list app Continente had available, so the client could add their list into the cart.
02 Experience and Customization
The experience was that of to "put your shopping list into the cart right off the shelf".
You could check on details on the product while clicking on them. You could then - or before - transfer the product into your cart with a drag gesture.
The client could customize their own shopping experience by customizing the store, excluding, for instance, categories that they rarely bought.
03 Payment Process
You could buy off-store and in-store, searching for the product via keyword search, selecting the categories or scanning the barcode on the product, via the search bar. The payment process and the ticket, with the marked thorn paper cut, were meant to look like an actual receipt, which you look at after purchasing your items. You could, at any moment, pull the ticket and check what was in line to get bought.
Continente App
Ideation & Testing
Along the process, we understood several things with the client:
- The actual physical store metaphor was better experienced in a tablet, but it was adapted to the portrait smartphone orientation.
- The number of products available on the client-side would create several product aisles, which was tackled with the store customization – keeping all products available on the search bar, via keywords or categories.
- The complexity of the app required moving everything extra out of the screen, so the purchasing process was easier and faster.
Conclusion + moving forward
Conclusions
I was involved in this first instance of the project, in an exploratory phase, as an external UI Designer, in-between different professional experiences. The app has, since then, evolved into what is now a different app.
From my perspective, it was a huge learning opportunity, due to the type of project, the type of client and the user experience opportunity it aimed to fullfill.
The app that is now the evolution of this first instance had to adapt to the complexity of services and products Continente provides and dropped the metaphor of the physical store.
The Continente branding universe evolved since and the app would need to adapt to the present branding experience, especially due to the different physical store experience, the services it provides and the on-store purchase flow.
Eventually, from the learnings from this instance, from my understanding, Continente proceeded to create different Apps – such as Continente Online and Continente Siga.
You can check their apps: Continente Online and Continente Siga.
This iteration of the App was shortlisted in the category of Best Cross Channel Customer Experience of World Retail Awards 2016.
It was released in late 2015, with some media coverage.
According to SONAE Continente press release, 6 months after releasing, the “app already had more than 50.000 monthly active users”.