Interview Structure:
-
We focused on first giving a high-level overview of why we were running the interviews and what our learning goals were to the interviewee
-
Asked about their demographic info to put better context to their answers
-
Conducted a 15-minute conversational/open-ended interview to better understand their experiences, opinions, and challenges
-
5-minute conclusion, reviewing key takeaways and opening up the floor to any other team members who wished to ask questions
After the interviews, we created affinity diagrams on Miro to organize our thoughts into separate themes based on what we heard:
Elaine is a working woman in her early thirties who likes going to the mall, but only with a specific goal/purchase in mind. She hates the thought of a crowded mall atmosphere and prefers shopping alone.
Efficient Elaine
Logan is a university student who enjoys the mall experience with friends but thinks it's a waste of time to go alone. He claims that waiting in checkout lines sometimes discourages him from going through with purchases. Logan prefers the online shopping experience much more than in-person. He spends most of his time hanging out with friends, studying, and playing video games.
Lazy Logan
These were the three statements that came out on top (most relevant):
-
“As Eficient Elaine, I want a way to search for which stores have the product I need so that I can easily find which stores I must visit and save time”
-
“As Efficient Elaine, I want the ability to book appointments with store employees so that I can have a more personalized shopping experience and save time.”
-
“As Lazy Logan, I want to be able to shop online so that I can spend more time studying or playing video games.”
All-in-one transaction
Users are also able to purchase multiple items across all stores in one seamless transaction.
During checkout, you can identify a pickup date, time, and location (curb-side pickup becomes available under COVID-19 protocols).
Search for anything!
With this search feature, users are able to conduct searches across all stores in the mall to find the products they need.
To support sustainable and socially conscious brands, the options of shopping from environmentally friendly and locally owned businesses are available as options to toggle on or off.
Book an appointment with an associate
With appointment shopping, merchants have better control of the number of people in stores, and the consumer can receive one-on-one personalized service from an associate.
Personalize your shopping experience
On the profile page, users are able to input sizing info, payment preferences, and they can view past transactions. The app's algorithm uses this info to curate a personalized experience for the user.
CF Superhub
With a focus on the future of value-based retail, our little group of Interac co-op students went through a 4-day long design sprint to find a viable solution to Cadillac Fairview’s business problem/case study.
Role
UX & UI Lead
Team
5 teammates
Tools
Figma, Miro
Timeline
4 days
The Problem
The retail industry is in significant flux. The past several years have brought about a big shift to online shopping, retail through social media, speedy order fulfillment, and data-driven product decisions. As market competition increases, organizations are all competing for buyers’ attention and spending dollars.
Given the market competition and the market landscape surrounding COVID-19, Cadillac Fairview wants to understand how they can better align with shoppers and encourage them to keep visiting malls. They wish to increase the value proposition of physical space for retailers.
With a focus on the future of value-based retail, our little group of Interac co-op students went through a 4-day long design sprint to find a viable solution to Cadillac Fairview’s business problem/case study.
Day One 👩🏻💻
Understand & Empathize
On day one, our goal was to understand more about the case study and the target audience for the solution. We took this day to find out exactly what we were trying to learn, and from there we came up with a bunch of interview questions for our interviewees.
Day Two ✌️
Persona Creation, User Stories, Opportunity Ranking
With our findings from the interviews, we created two personas, multiple user stories, and we used opportunity ranking to move ideas forward in the brainstorming process.
User Stories & Opportunity Ranking
By capturing the requirements and priorities of the personas following the “As [user role], I [want/need/require] [function] so that I can [accomplish objective]” format, we each individually came up with 5-7 user stories and shared them with the group.
We took each user story and ranked it on the matrix. From here, we chose the three user stories based on ranking to move forward into ideation (focusing on the stories in the opportunity box).
Day Three 🧠
Individual & Team Ideation
With the final day approaching quickly, we had to come up with some ideas for our pitch so we decided that the fastest way to do this was with individual ideation through a crazy 8’s exercise, then come together to share our ideas, and finally vote on our top picks in Miro.
We narrowed it down to four of our favourite ideas:
-
A single app that encompasses store data from each store/boutique in the mall, allowing for online ordering and efficient in-store/curbside pickups.
-
An app where you can search for items and filter out what you’re looking for
-
An app where you can book appointments with sales associates for a more personalized shopping experience
-
An enviro-sticker where you can see an indicator (green checkmark) of which store is environmentally-friendly or locally owned.
Day Four 💁🏻♀️
Prototyping, Usability Testing, & Pitch
In a very productive discussion, we decided that we could actually integrate all of these solutions into one product. We decided on a mall Superhub app that encompasses each store’s inventory data, including the features that we discussed in our ideation phase.
Solutions
1) Ability to make purchases across every store in the mall, but in a single transaction
2) Ability to make filtered searches (includes filters for sustainable businesses and locally-owned businesses) across each store in the mall
3) Ability to book personalized appointments with sales associates at select stores
4) Ability to personalize your shopping experience and view your transaction history
Usability Testing
Due to our limited time frame, we only got to interview one person for our usability testing, but we ended up getting great feedback and an overall positive review of our prototype.
“It’s the best of both worlds - it has the convenience of online shopping and the convenience of being able to pick something up close-by, instead of waiting for a delivery to arrive…” - Reviewer #2
Next Steps 👣
Some of our next steps include:
-
Seeking approval from company executives to focus on further research and development to develop a product that can be released to the market
-
12 months of financing to reach a goal of 1000 users on the platform by 2022
-
The first feature to roll out is the online ordering/curbside pickup feature as users found this feature the most helpful, (though the booking appointments feature may be the most feasible)
Looking Back 👀
One of our biggest challenges was creating a good product in only 4 days, but we rose to the challenge and put out something that could surely see the light of day in the near future.
We worked so well together after only knowing each other for 4 days. This project was surely a group effort, and we had a lot of fun working together along the way.
Pitch
Pitched this product to the judging panel in a slideshow format describing our solution and its viability. Our project pitch was successful!
Check out what's up next:
Done reading?