Why was the IDEO cart never adopted?

Jyoti Vashist (Jo)
3 min readFeb 13, 2023

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Seeing the IDEO team in their habitat is a reminder of how easy and fun it is to solve a problem given the right tools and methodologies. The IDEO team had adopted a unique approach to designing a shopping cart, at least for that time.

The foremost thing that comes to light is the varied background of the team members and the absence of hierarchy. I think a team must have a diverse set of people since each person tends to bring different perspectives. The absence of hierarchy on the other hand removes the inhibitions that a team member might have in presenting his/her idea in front of a senior member. This coupled with the team leader’s insistence on having an open mind and encouraging team members to “dump” all their ideas create a healthy team culture where no idea is treated as a bad idea. Another thing that stands out is their approach to identifying the issues with existing shopping carts by observing people in their habitat and gathering information based on their experience and not just from “experts”. Furthermore, they identify the patterns of the shoppers and how they differ from a professional shopper. This highlights their commitment to adopting a “user-centric” approach. Not forgetting that there was also a focus on keeping the discussion close to the problem which is often a major hurdle in group discussions. In the end, the team’s ideas were brought to fruition and built into prototypes. The final product was an amalgamation of the best bits of every prototype. The process of exploring and then refining ideas and then creating a viable prototype until satisfactory user feedback is received is a successful approach to delivering a product in time.

Despite the many rights in their approach, the IDEO team does falter in controlling the chaos that entails the process. Although having team members of different backgrounds can help bring a fresh perspective, it’s important to note that it wouldn’t be helpful if the problem required a specific expertise. The team also did not focus on specifically identifying the needs of the user and rather focused on the “problems” they faced. Their failure to establish the exact use of the shopping cart led them to implement a lot of solutions that wouldn’t have been useful for a shopper. For example, making the shopping cart cheaper in production doesn’t help the cause of a shopper. Getting feedback from the store owners seems counterproductive if the issues that are being resolved are a shopper. Having said this, the facilitated checkout added by the IDEO team could also limit the overall amount that can be added to the cart. Another way for them to capitalize on this would be to allow users to add a list of items via their mobile app.

The redesigned shopping cart successfully makes the maximum utilization of the cart. The team resolved almost all the issues identified in the earlier phase of the video. Keeping in mind the requirements, it does seem like a successful redesign. A gentle sideways effort moves the wheel to the left or right, increasing the shopping cart’s mobility. The multiple shopping baskets also increase shopper flexibility. However, one of the problems that shoppers could face would be that some items could be too heavy to hang in hooks. Additionally, packaged water bottles, big packets of wheat, rice, or even dog food would have no space to be placed.

One of the biggest problems was that the IDEO team did not focus on a particular user, thereby keeping an opportunity for dissatisfaction from both ends (shoppers and retailers). Why would a shopper need a cheaper cart? They intend to get the required items from a retail store as conveniently as possible. Focusing on retailers could highlight entirely different needs or asks. Another thing is that knowing that using a shopping cart is one of the necessities of a shopper, it could’ve been difficult for retailers to make the shoppers adopt an entirely different shopping cart. So “adoption” could’ve also contributed to the IDEO’s shopping cart not being widely used.

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Jyoti Vashist (Jo)

Passionate about digital transformation and the incredible power of technology to enhance everyday lives, often in ways users are unaware of.