Research And Design For Context-Aware Maternal And Child Supplies Shopping Assistant

When consumers buy maternal and child supplies, they often require a lot of auxiliary information. It is due to the richness of alternative brands, lack of parental knowledge and experience of the majority of the parents of the younger generation and consumers’relatively high attention degree and quality requirements of maternal and child supplies. Due to the limited conditions of time, place and equipment, when consumers buy maternal and child supplies in the supermarkets or stores, the richness and convenience of obtaining shopping information through traditional offline channels and network has been greatly limited. While smart phones are portable, immediate and personal, we research on and design a context-aware mobile maternal and child supplies shopping assistant to provide appropriate personalized service at the right time in the whole supermarket maternal and child supplies shopping activity so that the consumers can get good shopping experience.This study uses user-centered design methods. Firstly, through literature research, we know the market background and relevant research status of maternal and child supplies shopping assistant and determine to research and design under the guidance of activity-based context awareness model. Then through desk research, user observation and questionnaires, we have a comprehensive and in-depth understanding of maternal and child supplies supermarket shopping activity. We summarize the behavior characteristics, shopping decision-making process and user requirements of maternal and child supplies consumers. According to the user study results, we divide the maternal and child supplies supermarket shopping activity into eight behavior stages. For each behavior stage, we conduct system requirements analysis and design scenarios involving context-aware push service which can improve the effectiveness and intelligence of the system services. Then we design the context-aware mechanisms of the system. The context-aware service system architecture is established. Four kinds of utilized context of shopping assistant:consumers, products, system and environment, are proposed. The main reasoning and trigger rules of each behavior stage and products recommended service mechanism are also designed. Then we conduct interaction design. We build the system function structure and design the main interactive process of each behavior stage. We also design and implement a prototype of the system interface. Finally, we invite the target users to evaluate the context-aware mechanisms and interface prototype of the system.This study is an exploration of context-aware technology used in supermarket shopping environment and special commodity shopping activity. The evaluation shows that users approve most context-aware mechanisms of the shopping assistant relatively. The usability of the system is good. Users’ acceptance and satisfaction degree is relatively high. Thus the shopping assistant supports the shopping experience.