Personalized In-Store Shopping
Product Designer
Evaluation PM
Inhae Kim
Stefanie Choi
Kotoko Yamada
Kaitlyn He
January - June 2019
Find In Store
Personalized In-Store Shopping
Role
Product Designer
Evaluation PM
Team
Inhae Kim
Stefanie Choi
Kotoko Yamada
Kaitlyn He
Duration
January - June 2019
After the rise of online shopping, shoppers like to make a connection between online and offline shopping experiences. Find In Store is an offline shopping experience that helps goal-oriented customers find their items in a short time. To provide the best omnichannel experience in in-store shopping experience, a team of four senior undergraduate students in Human Centered Design and Engineering (HCDE) at the University of Washington collaborated for six months to research the problem of in-store shopping experience, ideate what can be designed to fill the needs of the customers, evaluate and prototype our design, and implement the design solution to present at HCDE Open House.
Sponsored by Nordstrom, Vibe, and Human Centered Design and Engineering in the University of Washington
Find In Store is an offline shopping experience that helps goal-oriented customers to find their items in a short time. To provide the best omnichannel experience in in-store shopping experience, team of four senior undergraduate students in Human Centered Design and Engineering (HCDE) at the University of Washington collaborated for 6 months to research the problem on in-store shopping experience, to ideate what can be designed to fill the needs of the customers, to evaluate and prototype our design, and to implement the design solution to present at HCDE Open House.
Sponsored by Nordstrom, Vibe, and Human Centered Design and Engineering in University of Washington
After the rise of the online shopping, shoppers like to make a connection between online and offline shopping experiences. Find In Store is an offline shopping experience that helps goal-oriented customers to find their items in a short time. To provide the best omnichannel experience in in-store shopping experience, team of four senior undergraduate students in Human Centered Design and Engineering (HCDE) at the University of Washington collaborated for 6 months to research the problem on in-store shopping experience, to ideate what can be designed to fill the needs of the customers, to evaluate and prototype our design, and to implement the design solution to present at HCDE Open House.
Sponsored by Nordstrom, Vibe, and Human Centered Design and Engineering in University of Washington
"When shopping for a specific item, I must walk the entire floor [in Nordstrom].
It took a long time to figure out where the item is."
- Nordy Club member
As people get closer to social media, they began to use the online shopping experience to connect into offline store. For Nordstrom specifically, it was one of the first to integrate harmonious offline and online (also called omnichannel) capabilities. This allowed the company to serve its customers seamlessly both across both channels.
As online shopping has grown tremendously, 63% of shopping occasions begin online. However, 62% of shoppers still want to go to the store to see, touch, feel and try out items. And 65% of offline shoppers decide not to purchase anything if they can't find the item with the proper size or color. So, this project focused on bridging the pros of online and offline shopping experiences to create more engaging and fulfilling shopping experiences, especially in item discovery.
Such omnichannel experiences help to meet and exceed customer’s expectations around speed, convenience, and personalization, propelling them to be one of the top retail companies. We are motivated by the success of Nordstrom’s omnichannel experiences. It’s important that we tackle the challenge of integrating an omnichannel experience in our project because it is crucial to not only the Nordstrom brand but also other retail stores as a driving factor for future retail experiences. So we focused on bridging the pros of online and offline shopping experiences to create more engaging and fulfilling shopping experience.
Click here to read the whole design process.
We conducted multi-methodology to research the trends of the retail store and the needs of the Nordstrom customers while maintaining Nordstrom's goal.
We read scholarly papers and news articles to learn the different approaches other stores took to integrate online and offline engagement.
We read scholarly papers and news articles to learn the different approaches that other stores took to integrate online and offline engagement.
After conducting the shop-along observation studies and interviews, four of us got together to share and analyze our data through affinity diagramming to identify the pain points of in-store shoppers.
We began with a very general target group: 25 to 45-year-old shoppers. However, due to lack of time, we focused on the latter type of shoppers because more issues arose regarding item discoverability. The two personas represent the main two groups of customers that we identified through our research findings.
We began with a very general target group: 25 to 45-year-old shoppers. However, designing for all shoppers who fell into this age range was too broad of a focus given the timeframe of this project. So we decided to focus on the latter type of shoppers because there are more issues that arose relating to item discoverability for our driven and time-limited shoppers.
After understanding the busieness goal and pain points of customers, we were able to finalize our design question.
We created nine design requirements to focus on user needs while considering business priorities. To account for both types of priorities, we split the design requirements into two categories: “Must Meet” and “Want to Meet”.
Must Meet
Must Meet
Want to Meet
Want to Meet
We each took a weekend to brainstorm and sketch five ideas for our first ideation stage. Utilizing the existing Nordstrom application seemed more implementable and realistic in a business mind. So, I suggested a personal QR code for all Nordy Club members that would be automatically scanned as soon as they enter the store to view the available items. Another idea was to show the store map that would guide them to find the item inside the store.
In sharing our ideas, there were some similarities and overlaps between them, and we found this immensely useful because it allowed us to group our ideas into categories and think of ways to build off of one another. We also used a 2x2 matrix to help us ensure that we focused on thoughts that met our users’ needs (based on our design requirements) and the business needs (based on feasibility and ROI).
I was the Project Manager for this milestone because I became most fascinated during the evaluation and prototyping phases, where I got to observe and listen to users’ feedback through usability testing and iterate our idea to be user-centered. To solidify our concept, we conducted usability testing with six participants. We split the team into two due to the process of our initial product concept that involved both mobile devices and kiosk experiences. Here are the concepts that we tested:
I presented wireframes to the Nordstrom team and received many valuable feedback to iterate our design. Then, I iterated wireframes to finalize into high-fidelity design.
We presented our process of wireframing to the Nordstrom team and received many valuable feedback to iterate our design. Then, we upgraded our wireframes to finalize into high-fidelity design.
We showcased Find In Store at the HCDE Open House and presented our design process to the Nordstrom UX team. At the end of the Open House, we got the Best in Show Award.
Looking back on this six-month process capstone project, I can undoubtedly say that I enjoyed and learned the most in my undergraduate program through my fabulous team, sponsors, and instructors. My teammates taught me how to reach out to professionals, be bold enough to talk to them, and professionally deliver my message.
We won the Best in Show Award at the HCDE Open House. It was my first time to work most competitively and to win an award in my entire career path. Through this project, I learned to work diligently with the mindset that ‘I can do this.’ I learned to think of the user and the business goal throughout the design process to fulfill the company’s productivity.
I thank our mentor, Wendy Roldan, for guiding and encouraging us throughout the process. Of course, special thanks to the Nordstrom UX team (Kristin Gannon, Sarah Carne, Sheila Paschall, and Ashley Constanzo) for their time, guidance, and enthusiasm for five months. Finally, I appreciate all my team members' contributions and fun memories. This project guided me to become a UX Designer before entering the industry.
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