Best Buy came to us in hopes to improve the holiday experience for their customers and employees on Black Friday 2021. They predicted that more shoppers would return to physical stores looking for the latest deals in the wake of increased vaccinations. Nonetheless, COVID was still a risk.
Predispositions were the assumptions made before our design process. We believed that employees were under a lot of pressure during Black Friday and less attention was paid to them. Therefore, we decided to focus on employees and their "extra work" issues.
To understand the context of the problem, we explored the workflow of retailers and identified some common challenges. We figured out that the heavy workload was mainly related to inventory handling and unreasonable shifts.
We also looked into Best Buy's competitors to see how other stores were handling the large crowds on Black Friday. Target's strategies included hiring seasonal employees, offering flexible schedules, and spreading discounts throughout November.
From our interviews with 3 Best Buy employees, we found that overworking wasn't an issue here. Instead, most negative work experiences were related to time-consuming tasks: finding items, checking out, restocking, small talks, directing customers, and recommending items.
We mapped the issues identified in the research onto 3 spaces, each defined by a pair of independent factors.
Armed with insights, we got a lot of design ideas through a quick brainstorming session. We sorted these ideas into 9 categories and prioritized them through NUF testing. Each idea was rated on a 1 to 10 scale for each criterion: New, Useful, and Feasible. We ended up with two themes: location tracking and checkout.
By attaching RFID tags to products, we will be able to track their specific locations. It will help customers find products, and also help employees with inventory handling.
Customers can use the Kiosk to order and pay for products upon arrival, then easily grab and go. It’s a contactless way to keep people safe and make shopping smoother.
We started with an experience prototype to quickly communicate our concepts to the audience.
3 participants experienced “finding items” and “self-pre-checkout" scenarios as customers in our mock store. The location tracking was proved to be effective and helpful.
Location tracking saves shopping time.
Asking employees for help is the last choice.
Since self-pre-checkout was less practical and brought many new issues such as order mix-ups, we discarded this concept and focused on the application of precise location tracking.
What if someone takes my pre-purchased item?
The kiosk area will still be crowded.
COVID was still a risk for both customers and employees. Our system simplifies shopping by reducing the time locating items while minimizing contact.
RFID can automatically identify and track tags attached to objects. It is not new to retail and has been widely used for inventory tracking and store ops.
The average cost of an RFID tag has fallen to $0.04/tag in the last decade. Morden RFID solutions can reset store economics, lowering costs and boosting revenue.
This was my first project since I began my Master's in HCI at Indiana University. It was a great learning experience, and working with industry partners made the entire thing much more realistic than a traditional 'no-constraints' class project. Feasibility is one of the main concerns of stakeholders in design reviews, which is why we have abandoned the Kiosk concept based on our research.
If we had more time and resources, I would have liked to delve deeper into the workflow of inventory management within the business and explore more use cases for location tracking. In this project, we focused primarily on the experience that our solution would deliver. I also wish to conduct usability testing and iterate on the UI, which would help us measure the impact on users.
