Awarded as IXDA 2015 Shortlist http://awards.ixda.org/entry/2015/a-re-design-of-shopping-experience-to-leverage-consumer-showrooming-behaviors/

Spring, 2014

Team: Paul Sheetz, Paula Falco, Thomas Brandenburg

Main Contribution:  Research, Ideation, Wireframe, Prototype, Video Editing

Context

With more and more consumers shifting to online shopping for better price and convenience, offline store are facing increasing challenges. However, online shopping limits physical interactions between product and consumers. To embrace these emerging behaviors, the wine project was developed with the aim to redesign the shopping experience. 

1. Defining our design problem

Create 5 User Behavioral Models through surveys

In order to understand consumer’s behavior around showrooming, we created a survey with questionnaires and find out five main behavior patterns between online shopping and in-store shopping: 

  1. Browse in store and purchase online. To acquire an authentic feeling of the product and get a competitive price online, some consumers prefer to browse in store and purchase online.
  2. Browse digitally and purchase in store. To take advantage of information in digital world, some consumers choose to browse online and purchase in store.
  3. Browse/purchase digitally and browse in store. To combine the digital information and physical interaction with product, some consumers browse both online and in store.
  4. Browse/ purchase online while try and return in store. With improved returning policy of online shopping, some consumers browse and purchase online while try and return in store.
  5. Browse/purchase digitally, pick up/exchange in store. Recently, retailers are combining their online website with physical stores. So more and more consumers are browsing/ purchasing online and pick up/exchange in store.

Showrooming Behavior Patterns

 

2. Involving users in 3 concept development phases 

Phase 1: We conducted in-depth interviews with two real-life scenarios: 

Scenario 1: Imagine you’re invited to a friends party tonight and you plan to buy some wine for the party. Now you are shopping for wine in a store...

Scenario 2: You remember a tasty wine that you enjoyed with your friend last weekend and now you’re shopping in a store and trying to find it.

To further engage our interviewees in this phase, we also set up an in-store shopping environment with aisles and shopping basket. 

Phase 2: We generated 3 design principles by referring to previous interviews.  

1. Discussion-All of our interviewees mentioned that they need to reach out to their friends either to know about others’ preference or recommendation from connoisseurs. So that we not only aim to foster discussion online for opinion-sharing, we also offer access to online comments and assist collaboration in decision-making in store.

2. Education-As non-expert consumers, our interviewees expressed their confusion in picking up wines in store. Because of the limited information on the package, consumers can hardly tell the taste from the wine.  So we want to enhance education in store to help consumers make decisions by informing them more background information and enrich their experience.  

3. Search-When choosing a wine in store, consumers might recall their memory of previous experiences. And they usually connect the context with the product. For example, they might remember the scene of discovering a sachi matches perfectly with sushi in a cold winter night. And their memory will influence their choices in store. Thus, we want to improve their searching experience and link their past, present and future purchasing through offering them personalized shopping history and recommendation according to their preferences.

Phase 3: As a team, we brainstormed and sketched design concepts, incorporating those design principles we generated at Phase 2. 

To step out of our personal perspectives and to validate our design concepts, we decided to take our work into the field. We visited the wine sections in three local grocery stores. We unofficially approached a variety of customers and showed them our sketches to solicit their feedback.

 

3. Designing for three types of user

One of the concept rendering, the interactive table quickly rose to the top as customers' favorites. What appeal to the costumers was it would be simple but engaging interaction, a costumer would grab a bottle of a shelf and place it on the table and that would trigger the table surface to light up with a clustering of multi media information, perhaps it would include video clips, maps, and information graphics illustrating the wine product.

 

 

4. Designing the interface

 
 
 

5. Validating design at the conference 

We get an opportunity to install our design at 2014ID Strategy Conference, where our concept get exposed to the public and we received lots of valuable feedbacks.