RetailK

Project overview

This was a college project which challenged us to design a kiosk system that provided a unique and valuable service to customers in a retail store.

Customer surveys have identified fitting rooms as one of the most critical points for sales conversions, with 66% of shoppers noted they need to be satisfied with the product in the fitting room before purchasing it. For this project, we wanted to design a kiosk system that aided product discovery in a retail store.

Contextual Research and Competitor Analysis

To start our project, we used contextual research to understand the users we are designing for and areal-world sense of the cultures and contexts that we are designing within.

Utilizing the POEMS framework —People, Objects, Environments, Messages, and Services, over the course of 3 hours, we observed and made notes of both shoppers who opt to interact with an existing retail kiosk as well as shoppers who prefer to interact personally with sales associates.

Created personas to guide our design

Determined the scope of the MVP and designed Wireframes

Using the information collected from our market and contextual research, we honed on a set of features that would help us craft a seamless in-store shopping experience for the users. Here was our scope for the Minimum Viable Product (MVP):

• The kiosk will have an in-built product scanner for customers to review product availability and size/styles
• Users will have the option to browse an online catalogue
• The kiosk will support multiple languages
• Users can sort and filter by size, colour, features and newest additions
• The user will have the option to request multiple sizes of the same product to try on
• If the customer calls for assistance and a representative has accepted to help, the kiosk will display an image of the representative and their name

User tested low fidelity designs and iterated

We tested three iterations of the low-fidelity prototype with 21 individuals. Users were asked to role play as a customer in a department store and complete three tasks with the prototype.

Our pre-test questionnaire included questions to understand participants’ favourite mode of shopping(in-store, online, or an even combination of both) and why they chose this as their preferred method of shopping. These questions helped us understand each user's comfort level with technology and their emotional connection to shopping. Some users preferred the human side of in-store shopping, while others preferred to have an independent experience.

The tests helped us identify usability and accessibility flaws in the design before we started designing the high-fidelity mockups for the MVP.

Our Minimum Viable Product | High Fidelity Prototype