We are increasingly moving towards a more self-service driven culture as a society, where convenience and efficiency are of prime value. Technology is an enabler that is continuously pushing the map into this self-service driven culture. Examples of these are all around us from banking apps allowing us to take care of all our needs without physically stepping into a bank to travel bookings, all the way through to online shopping.
Online shopping brings the stores to our finger tips, but the need for brick and mortar shopping is still here to stay, for items that require quick consumption and for the touch/feel aspect. This doesn’t mean that we cannot continuously improve on that experience, in fact it is a necessity to stay ahead and to differentiate from the competition. Inspired by the Amazon futuristic store concept, I wanted to identify possible gaps and customer frustrations for in-store shopping, and provide a solution for a more seamless and timely experience. An experience which would give consumers more control.
What is Scan-out?
Scan-out is a concept app, which provides a platform for consumers to select from participating stores and allows them to scan items for a full checkout process, without having to wait in long lineups. It provides stores with an option to opt into using this platform without having to worry about the back-end technicalities and costs.
How would Scan-out work?
The app would integrate with each participating stores point of sale (POS), inventory and customer management system, to be able to provide product details, checkout process and recommendations based on customer buying patterns. It would allow customers to have the option to scan-out from all their regular stores and have a record of purchase histories, in one place.
The Challenge
This was a 6 week individual project for the interaction design program at Emily Carr University of Art and Design. We had the option to do a topic of our choice, and I wanted to take my past experience working in a retail corporation and create an application to improve the in-store shopping experience of customers.
Preliminary research
I started with some preliminary research from online resources, as I wanted to narrow down the scope to a few key problem areas.
“What frustrates consumers the most about the in-store shopping experience?”
Source: Capgemini Digital transformation report 2017
The Interviews
“For research interviews, I wanted to find out how comfortable users are with using their phones during shopping and their behaviour towards the existing self-checkout counters. ”
The Findings
Some factors that persuaded interviewees to use one checkout method over the other:
Persona
Walking through Tabitha’s after work experience
Task Flows
Based on the opportunities identified in the user journey map, I created a few task flows for the app.
Sketching and Wireframing
I had created some sketches and transferred into wireframes, using Sketch, to start testing out the flow.
Based on the initial concept feedback, I started creating more detailed sketches of the app screens to refine its functionality.
Initial Dashboard
In-store Dashboard
Scan-out Mock ups
I learned the importance of research and interviewing people to understand their frustrations and in turn, this helps to better defend our design decisions.
The importance of a clean aesthetic and feel of the product. Based on feedback, I had gone through several visual design versions for this app until I reached the visuals shown in this piece.
There is always room for improvement.