Donna Saccutelli

A Design Thinking Approach to Sustainable Inclusive Shopping Environments for Grocery Shoppers with Low Vision

The seemingly simple daily life activity of grocery shopping could be an exhausting ordeal for people who are blind or have low vision. The objectives of this inclusive design research study were to ethnographically identify the barriers experienced by shoppers with low vision and to carry out participatory design of an inclusive solution to mitigate the situation. This report documents the four phases of the study – Discover; Define; Develop; and Disseminate. A demo prototype ‘Shopping Buddy,’ with the innovative idea of Universal Product Inclusive Code (UPiC) at its core, was designed to aid shoppers with low vision. The UPiC system will provide necessary product information to the shopper by leveraging existing data from the manufacturers’ databases. Thus, the proposed solution is not just an assistive tool; it also includes ingredients for effecting systemic changes in the retail grocery ecosystem comprising the industry’s Manufacturers, Distributors, Retailers and Consumers (MDRC). To make the benefits, and resulting inclusion, sustainable, recommendations regarding the UPiC are made to the MDRC, also addressing the needs of commercial viability. Such sustainable inclusive design will ultimately result in curb cut advantages for all shoppers, thereby enhancing sales and benefitting the Canadian economy. http://openresearch.ocadu.ca/id/eprint/263/