Project Overview
According to DSG's 2022 financial reports, the company's current revenue is $12 billion.
$10 Billion comes from retail stores. With this context in mind and the reemergence of consumers since the COVID-19 pandemic, DSG has asked us to design an in-store service. How might we encourage athletes (customers) who would otherwise shop online, to come in-store?
DOMAIN
Service Design
UX/UI
CLIENT
TEAM
Katie Sun
Irene Kang
Jonathan Perlman
Jingwei Huang
Aditi Awasthy
Dick's Sporting Goods
MY ROLES
Product Designer
Project Manager
DURATION
8 Weeks
SKILLS
Guerilla Research
Competitive Analysis
Stakeholder Management
User Interviews
Design Thinking
Service Solution
Sneaker Bar
Sneaker Bar transforms how customers shop, by allowing them to craft a Virtual Cart of try-on shoes at the convenience of their home. They can then book an appointment and arrive at the Bar to receive personalized guidance from Teammates (employees) as they test their shoes without needing to wait.
Our final prototype. Click on the gif to view the prototype!
Poster to supplement our design
Process
Problem Statement
DSG has asked us to analyze their current product-service system (PSS) and conduct research to identify unmet or underserved needs of existing or new customers, employees, partners, and other stakeholders to develop an in-store service that creates value.
"HOW MIGHT WE'S"
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How might we convert online shoppers to in-store buyers?
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How might we motivate people to feel more excited about the physical store?
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How might we leverage the existing app (a digital component) and incorporate it with a physical service?
Generative Research
Uncovering Problems and Identifying Opportunities
We embarked onto our new problem space by conducting generative research that consisted of a healthy mix of in-store experiential research,
informational/secondary online research and guerilla research.
I did multiple in-store interviews with employees. Here’s me talking to Richie!
Our team discovered that shoes continue to be a hot market, accounting for 21% of DSG's 2021 revenue, but approximately $20 mil is lost due to shoe returns.
Poor fit is a top reason for returns. The current shoe try on process is repetitive and cyclical. Customers have to wait for an available employee for assistance to pull different sizes and styles of shoes from inventory. They may not even have their perfect pair in stock. Negative, frustrating factors accumulate to a poor in-store customer experience.
To further understand a customer who is seeking the perfect pair of shoes, I developed two personas that captured the themes and findings that arose from our initial research: customers who are frequent online shoppers and employees who value efficiency.
Our generative research indicates there is a here is a critical pain point with customers finding the right fit in shoes, as well as a“try-on friction” for both the customer (athlete) and employee (teammate).
To better understand our customer experience, I created a service blueprint of the current DSG shoe shopping experience to allow the team to better understand the service and the number of actors involved.
Ideation
From Thoughts to Actions
Our team discovered opportunity areas within the shoe try-on space. One of my favorite Service Design readings is “Servicescapes: The Impact of Physical Surroundings on Customers and Employees" by Mary Jo Bitner. She writes, "environments that elicit feelings of pleasure are more likely to be the ones where people want to spend time and money" (pg 63).
I imagined Sneaker Bar to be a servicescape that cultivates desirable customer behavior – a destination that catered to creating a fun space for athletes to linger and enjoy their shoe try-ons. The more I can influence an athlete’s internal “cognitive, emotional, and physiological” response, the more I can also change their “behavior and beliefs about the trustworthiness of a service or its quality.”
My initial sketch for Sneaker Bar
Our team created a concept model to describe our service to stakeholders.
The current in-store shoe purchase process can be repetitive, frustrating and time intensive. With our service, we can simplify the process by removing the silo between digital and physical by allowing customers to create a cart of try-on shoes before they arrive. They can leisurely choose the shoes they'd like to try, know which store would carry the shoes and receive expert guidance based on their selections once they arrive.
I revised and proposed a new service blueprint for what DSG's shoe shopping experience would look like with our service, Sneaker Bar.
Evaluative Research
Identifying Hidden Opportunities
We presented our Sneaker Bar idea to the Dick's Sporting Goods Product Design team, which allowed us to validate our research indicating shoes are where the pain points and business opportunities (sales) are the largest. In addition, we also confirmed that they are already researching ways to maximize employee efficiency by decreasing repetitive actions and increasing high value engagements with customers.
They provided us a few key considerations:
1. A desire to differentiate DSG from the competition by emphasizing Sneaker Bar as destination (e.g. for sneaker drops)
2. How might we focus less on transactions and more on in-store experiences?
3. How do we balance customer, company and employee values?
With insightful client feedback, we narrowed down our service proposition: to emphasize customer agency in creating their own try-on shoe experience to find their perfect pair and streamlining transactional activities to allow employees to be redeployed to other functions (e.g. recommendations, consultative selling, etc.) to take advantage of their subject matter expertise.
Our next steps focused more on conducting evaluative research, using the digital experience to offer personalization in a way that drives athletes toward a more experiential in-store experience.
We built a physical foam core prototype as part of experience prototyping, to understand how users would interact in context of the space.
Figma mock up with screens that take a user through the Perfect Pair process (at a high-level) from shopping to check-in at the Sneaker Bar (think-aloud, shop-along).
We had users ‘bodystorm’ and simulate check-in, waiting, and shoe hand-off at the physical Sneaker Bar.
Experience prototyping, think-aloud and guerilla research
We conducted experience prototyping and simulated the experience of the service with Figma screens and a lo-fi foam core physical structure (Sneaker Bar) in order to observe user behaviors and motivations in the typical context/environment. These two components cover the main touchpoints for our service. Using Figma and foam board allowed us to make rapid edits, test concepts quickly, and iterate on the fly.
Research Impact
Leveraging research to add incremental customer and business value
Affinity Diagramming helped our team validate assumptions and synthesize our data, finding themes and patterns for new insights.
What We Learned
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When making expensive purchases, athletes would like to be able to test their product in the store before buying, especially with higher-value goods.
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Customers are receptive to AI/ML personalizations
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Athletes finding it challenging to know how their shoes fit on the actual surface of play, and will actively pursue opportunities to test different options by walking around the store.
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Multiple participants began their shopping journey online first (mobile or desktop)
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Many like visiting stores especially for discounts and like to check online to know the availability first
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Validated that some participants wouldn’t mind waiting for their virtual cart to be made, while others wanted it immediately
Click gif to view Figma prototype.
The first lofi prototype relied on a QR code to trigger cart creation, which we later changed to be appointment based to decrease wait time.
Trialability is highly valued
Both customers and employees value efficiency, but only for transactional processes not for the customer experience.
Personalization drives more consumer interest and is a differentiator.
Value Added to all stakeholders: customers, employees and DSG
Retrospective & Takeaways
Pivoting with Future Research
This project helped me understand that design and research must always be intentional. All decisions must be backed up by reasoning, and just because something looks aesthetically beautiful doesn’t mean it’s the best solution to your problem. Time and monetary budgets are also often big constraints, so conducting the appropriate research methods tailored to strategically generate or validate ideas is incredibly crucial.
If we had more time, I would:
Conduct more contextual user testing to avoid sample bias
Flesh out AI/ML app recommendations or
VR try-ons
Design Sneaker Bar services: menu, raffle, discounts and experiences
Takeaway 1
Balancing the needs of various stakeholders is challenging but a must.
Through this process, we had to balance the needs of the Dick's Sporting Goods team and consumer needs. Having multiple rounds of ideation and iterations of ideas allowed us to develop a service that provides value to both the company and consumer to utilize opportunities that are hidden in plain sight and to connect them to existing assets, processes, capabilities, and technologies.
Takeaway 2
I thrive in turning research insights into potential design opportunities.
Our initial meeting with the Dick's Sporting Goods team provided us with multiple exploration areas. Still, it wasn’t until we could begin building out a rough service blueprint did we understand what was communicated to customers and what wasn’t. It was taking our research insights and the service blueprint we created that allowed us to fully understand areas of opportunities to see areas that would make the greatest impact on a product-service system.
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