Published on | Prototyping: From UX to Front End — Medium Meiling Du Around 12 pm PST on Amazon Go Opening Day in Seattle (Photo by Meiling Du)

If you haven’t heard of Amazon Go, it’s the world’s first grocery store with no lines, no checkout. Just grab and go. The long-awaited Amazon Go finally opened to the public in Seattle at 7 am PST on Monday, January 22, 2018. According to Tech Crunch, the store doesn’t use facial recognition, and instead is equipped with a camera system powered by computer vision and machine learning technology to quickly identify different people in the store and objects being moved.

I was excited to try out this whole new shopping experience. I also talked with others about their experience and read online reviews. Essentially how it works is using the Amazon Go app QR code to enter the store, pick up what you want, walk out, and then view receipt on the app. Sounds pretty easy huh? However, like every other task, there’s always room to improve for better user experience. So let’s dive deep into the Amazon Go shopping experience.

The Onboarding Process

The first step is to download the Amazon Go app. Opening the app, you will see a quick introduction tutorial.

It is pretty straightforward and the illustration motion tutorial is engaging and delightful. Notice that there’s no skip option for the tutorial. This might be too much swiping (8 swipes to be exact) for those who have heard of the process and just want to start using the app immediately.

In the tutorial, it gives a heads up about “Since products you take go in your virtual cart, please don’t take things for other shoppers”. This is a limitation of the technology. Although we can scan in our family and friends so what they take will be charged on our account, it wouldn’t be convenient if we want to pay separately. If two friends scan in with their own codes and help each other take things, then whoever takes one item off the shelf would be charged for the item even though the other person gets it and walks out with it. But it’s common to hand things to friends/family when shopping. Sometimes we might even share one shopping cart and sort things out at checkouts to pay separately.

After signing in, the app asks for confirmation for a payment card. Then it goes to the main tabs with a pop-up message regarding notifications. This page could have more clarification for what notifications would be sent to users. When seeing this, I thought that it would be for notifying purchase, receipt, etc., but I wasn’t sure. I just hit “allow” as I thought it would be helpful.

The Before-Shopping Exploration

After allowing notifications, it shows your QR code to scan into the store. This is the first tab of the app, which is dubbed “key”. Notice that at the bottom there’s a message “For your security, screenshots will not work for entry”, which is a good reassuring message for security that can be dissmissed by clicking the ‘x” at the right corner.

Discover tab displays items categorized by tags including Featured, Breakfast, Lunch & Dinner, Snacks & Sweets, Cold Drinks, Amazon Meal Kits, Groceries, Beer, Wine and Sale. Browsing the categories, I clicked on several items to see the details and found a yogurt in the sale category that I would like to get.

I wondered if it would be easy to find this product in the store and whether the app would help me locate it. There’s no search box in the discover tab and you can’t pre-order or create your own shopping list.

The other tabs are Receipts, About, and More, which will be discussed into more detail below.

The In-Store Shopping Uncertainty

With my questions in mind, I took a bus and got to Amazon Go on its opening day. It was around 12 pm and there was a long line outside the store. I heard from a staff that it was also super busy in the early morning. So I decided to come back later at around 2 pm. At that time, I only waited for about 10 minutes to get in. While we were lining up, the staff kept asking us if we had downloaded the app with the code ready. Every one of us was fully prepared and we just waited for our turns to get in.

Scanning codes to get in (Photo by Meiling Du)

Upon entering the store, the staff greeted us with big smiles and I scanned my code to enter at ease. It’s a small store packed with people shopping and taking pics.

At this moment, the app Key tab and Receipt tab changed and showed the message of pending charges. I was a bit confused about the reminder — “Feel free to close this app”. As a first-time user, I hadn’t established trust towards Amazon Go and I would prefer to keep checking the app while shopping.

Photo by Meiling Du

There’s a lot of cameras in the store to track customers’ movement. It looked a bit creepy to me, but my excitement for this whole new experience helped me ignore those cameras.

The store is not very well organized with no number sign for aisles but it’s not hard to navigate since it’s small with limited items. The first one I picked up is a bag of cookies. I put it in my bag and noticed that the Key and Receipt tabs didn’t show this item that I took from the shelf. It just stayed the same with the message of pending charges. I kept walking around and saw the yogurt I had wanted to get. I took it off and still no changes in the Key or Receipt tab.

I knew this wouldn’t be a problem as I had seen in the tutorial and in the news that I would see my receipt after leaving the store. But it would be better to see the item showing in the app while shopping to be sure of what would be charged. The fear of making mistakes is real for shopping at Amazon Go.

Photo by Meiling Du

Another question I had in mind is what if customers took off something from the wrong shelf or put back at the wrong place, would we get charged the wrong amount? And I heard others talking about this too, but it’s not addressed in the app’s help section.

I asked one of the staff in the store and he assured me that it would be no problem. That made me feel a bit relieved but I wondered why it’s that. Apprently that’s a computer vision/machine learning question that the staff said he’s not able to explain.

The After-Shopping Anxiety

And so I got the two items I wanted, it’s time to go! I hesitated a bit and saw other people just walk out. Then I walked out too… I guess I was just afraid of making mistakes. I stood outside of the store checking my receipt. After waiting for 3 minutes, it’s still not up. I felt a bit anxious because I wanted to see if Amazon Go got my purchase right.

In another 5 minutes, I finally got the receipt. It was correct! And it even tells you how long your shopping time was. For some people, it took nearly 15 minutes to get the receipt. There’s no message in the app regarding in how long the receipt would be up. It only states “shortly after you’ll get your receipt” in the tutorial. I also received an email receipt from Amzon Go two hours later. It would be great to get it sooner too.

Takeaways

I was pretty amazed by the Amazon Go shopping experience. It was fast and mostly accurate. However, there was also uncertainty and anxiety felt in the process. As a new product utilizing groundbreaking technology, it’s inevitable that it has limited features and functions. Below are some suggestions about what would need to be improved.

Clarifying How It Works

The app should cover key questions customers are concerned about in the “help” section.

What happens if items are put in the wrong shelf or picked up from the wrong shelf?
Are we able to see the items we pick up showing in the app while shopping?
Around how long does it take to get the receipt?

Meeting User Needs To Quickly Discover, Organize and Find items

Add a search box in the discovery page.
Add creating grocery lists feature in the discovery page.
Enable navigating the store using the app. For instance, by tapping to see the details of an item, it would have information reagrding where it’s located in the store. And it would be even more convenient with a geolocation service to show a route to the item location. Since the concept of Amzon Go is a store that would need no or few staff, asking for an item location in the store wouldn’t be as convenient as in common grocery stores.

Gaining Users’ Trust Through Immediate Feedback

Photo by Meiling Du

The concept of Amazon Go is grab and go and so not showing items in the app during shopping would make sense for this whole new experience. However, due to the fact that the system is not 100% accurate and on the first day it happened that some got “free treats”, it might be hard for some to establish trust towards Amazon Go shopping accuracy. You can read more here: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/22/amazon-go-grocery-store-opened-and-we-accidentally-stole-a-yogurt.html

Therefore, at the early stage, it would be helpful to give customers immediate feedback and enable them to monitor their shopping experience.

1. Show customers the items they pick up or put back in the app as a digital shopping cart just like what you see before confirming to check out on the Amazon site or app. This would assure customers what would get charged, giving them a sense of control.

2. Speeding up the receipt showing time so it’s up right after walking out. Or tell customers in the app how long it takes to get the receipt as a pop-up message after they walk out and also in the help section.

Some of the above features mentioned might not be easy to realize due to technology and other constraints but they would greatly improve the user experience of Amazon Go shopping and hopefully they would be added soon.

Photo by Meiling Du

Thanks for reading! Please comment below to share your thoughts and feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn.

I haven’t tested the return and refund process. Here is an article if you would like to read about it: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2018/01/we-test-the-worlds-first-amazon-go-watch-you-shop-grocery-store/

<a href="https://medium.com/media/b85dfbb5286d8a25cf2e754b9462cf45/href">https://medium.com/media/b85dfbb5286d8a25cf2e754b9462cf45/href</a>

Examining the User Experience of Amazon Go Shopping — Just Walk Out was originally published in Prototypr on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Examining the User Experience of Amazon Go Shopping — Just Walk Out

Cool stuff, every week

More Articles