This was a collaboration between UNT Frisco's Project Design and Analysis Cohort 2 and Jonathan Saffian, Senior Product Manager at Sam's Club Innovation Lab. Using finalist submissions for the 2020 Sam's Club Innovation Jam, students crafted new innovations for the Sam's Club company based on those submissions.

We decided to reiterate the Sam’s Plan Easy proposal due to its ability to work well in the omnichannel retail environment. Personally, I was a huge fan of their idea as I empathize with customers that get overwhelmed by the warehouse shopping experience.

What is Sam's Plan-Easy?

Analyzing the Original Problem Statement and Solution (Week 1)

Problem Statement:

Often people try to buy a lot of items related to some event and end up forgetting
something or sometimes they might not know what to search to get a particular item. Also, they have to check for the delivery date of each item. Cannot afford to get it delivered after the event.

Solution:

Sam’s Plan-Easy aims at theme / package-based suggestions for every event based on
members' favorite brands (from the purchase history), and best-selling and top-rated items required for the event. It also sends reminders, in case any of the suggested item’s delivery promises close in on the event date.

Our Thoughts:

As a group, we loved this idea but noticed it has a lot of moving parts. Given the time frame of the project, we decided to work on one element from the stated solution and make it into a brand-new idea. The idea of package-based suggestions intrigued us so that became our starting point.

The Innovation Process

Finding the Real Core Problem & New Solution
(Week 2 - Week 3)

Our first step in innovating this idea was to reverse engineer their solution into a new problem statement. We do this to help us find the true core problem that their solution was trying to solve. Through this, we gain new insights into how we can make a solution that is better and more effective.

One of the ways we do this is called the 5 Whys method:

Why is Sam's Plan-Easy the best solution?

because it offers a personalized shopping experience.

Why does it have to offer a personalized experience?

because customers like personalization because it makes things faster.

Why do consumers need to make things faster?

because customers like a seamless and quick shopping experience.

Why do customers like a seamless and quick shopping experience?

because customers don't want to shop for long.

Why don't customers like to shop for long.....?

Because for many, Shopping is a Chore!

This brought us to our new problem statement:

Customers view their shopping experience as a burden, rather than an opportunity.

This immediately made me think about shopping during the holidays and how overbearing it is. It is the most exhausting thing ever and once you think you have gotten everything; you always miss something. Now, we knew that some Christmas and holiday kits already existed but what if we could expand upon that idea? Think about it, ready to cook holiday meals, quality toy kits, and even Christmas trees that already come with ornaments and a topper. We were getting somewhere with this idea.

Then, finally, it was my time to shine! For all iterations, I oversaw the creation of storyboards that fit our new problem statement and potential solutions. For our first solution, I thought it would be interesting to bring their original idea beyond just the website and app and into pre-made packages that could be purchased in-store.

After presenting the idea to Jonathan Saffian and our other stakeholders we got feedback that they were huge fans of my storyboards and loved the idea of care packages. They were wary of the word choice used in our problem statement though. We were given this question to think about.

"Is all shopping seen as a burden?"

We recognized that we were thinking in too small of a scope and overgeneralizing the term ‘shopping’. We forgot to consider that there are many forms of shopping and several different opinions about shopping too. These were all things we needed to consider in our next iteration.

Back to the drawing board

Using Stakeholder Feedback to Make Revisions
(Week 4 - Week 5)

I realized that we needed to rework our problem statement because it was too small, and we needed to think about what exactly makes shopping a burden and in what cases.

This is when Shyla, one of my teammates, told our team about a service her family uses called Tovala. This is one of those services that sends already prepped meals to one’s house on a weekly basis where all the recipient has to do is cook their meal in the specialty oven that they have also purchased from Tovala.

The reason that Shyla’s family uses this service is that Shyla lives with her father in Texas who does not have time to cook and her mother lives in Delaware. Shyla’s mother is concerned that she is not getting proper healthy meals and so she signed up for

Trovala so that way Shyla can have fresh and healthy meals every week. This is how Shyla’s mother cares for her daughter even if they are hundreds of miles away.

Shyla’s story really inspired us and we started thinking if we could use a similar ideology for the Sam’s Club company. After collaborating with my teammates some more, we were able to come to this problem statement:

Consumers have the obstacle of time, effort, and distance when trying to provide support and care for their loved ones. The effort, stress, and anxiety of shopping for other people is an issue that many consumers experience.

Our solution this time focused more on an online "build your own care package" system where customers can create their own care package and send it to anyone they like. It was time for me to work my magic a create a storyboard that fit our solution and problem statement. This time around, I focused more on icon use to make a more cohesive story.

Final Presentation

Receiving Final Stakeholder Feedback & Project Reflection (Week 5)

After presenting our final idea to Jonathan Saffian, this was his final feedback to us:

The concern of how perishable items would work with this concept.
Fridge lockers would have to be implemented at places like dorms and apartment complexes.
Difficult product to incentivize. We would have to leave a "trail" to entice customers to use this.

My Final Thoughts:

Jonathan gave us some great things to consider if we wanted to continue this project. The next step I would have taken was to look at a more sufficient way to deliver perishable goods by looking at other companies that do so such as Hello Fresh and Plated. I would also take some more time to look into data analytics to see how successful care packages would be for Sam's Club and find out if online is truly the best route for us to take. This was an amazing project to work on and gave me great insights into what life would be like as a professional UX designer.