We are creating a shopping experience that encourages exploration by minimizing on floor inventory and personalizing the fitting room experience.  We are using technology and user research to enhance the department store experience. 

This is a sponsored project with Cognizant. 

“ At Cognizant, we give organizations the insights to anticipate what customers want and act instantly to deliver on those demands. So they can achieve the goal of every modern business: staying one step ahead of a fast-changing world.” - from Cognizant Website

The Team

from left to right
Madison Lovelace (me)
Walker Barrett 
Jayjay Ugbe

Throughout the project I will tell you our whole story beginning to end, making sure to highlight the part that I took ownership of. 

Now, Let’s Get into it...

Our project started like any good project does: with research. Our research m methods consisted of observations, ethnography, casual interviews, literature reviews and desk research.

Our analysis methods consisted of cluster analysis & general brain map of the connections found.

Our Research Findings

A study found that the emotion joy was the only emotion that stood as an outlier among two store types having been experienced significantly more frequently, department and malls. The study found that as stores deviated from shopper expectations, negative emotions became much more common

Multi/omni channel retail, and store openings help to increase purchase frequency but not order size.

Chart shows adopters of new technolgy in retail based on 2019 study.

Observations

2/4 observations done by me and all photos taken by me 


From our obsrvations we couldn’t ignore the clutter of having all the inventory on the floor. A kiosk to check out in every section would lead us to believe that by spreading out representatives, department stores set themselves apart with specialized expertise.

Survey

constructed and published by me

Our survey recieved 113 respondents and gave us some incite on the most memorable part of the department store experience as well as the major pain points people experience.

We used qulatircs to map our data into word clouds that picked out the major pains and memories within the department store experience.

Most Memorable Experience

Pain Points

When thinking about the new experience we had to decide what our main goals were. We wanted to give relief to the shoppers by not having to carry around clothes. This meant there needed to be some way to have a catalog of items.

The kiosks act as a way to check what is in that catalog as well as reserve a fittign room and send your selected clothes in your catalog to the checkout counter. 

When taking the inventory off the floor and into the back of the store, we had to deal with the amount of items that would need to be displayed. We also wanted the interaction to be explorative.

(I was responsible for this section above, see some display sketches in above section)

Our final component is the fitting room. Here our main goal was to have the clothes from the catalog sent to the fitting room and be there before the customer even steps inside. This makes the shoppign experience more personal.

We Overscoped

Our feedback was centered around the fitting room aspect of our design. The people at Cognizant thought this was a place to look deeper into and told us to focus on the fitting room.

From here on out, we are just focusing on the fitting room part of this journey.

Testing

Hypothises
People will prefer a fitting room that encourages a shared experience with friends or family. People will prefer a shopping experience that does not require them to carry clothes throughout the store.

Objective:   
We wanted to test our concept’s ability to give users the freedom to have their hands free while also providing a space to explore clothing choices with friends and/or family.

Model (to the right)
We all were involved in making the model and we conducted 9 testing instances, some people by themselves and some people with 1-2 accompaning people.

Testing Journey

We coded our interview results into these top 4 buckets, in each bucket there was changes that needed to be made to the final design.

Throughout the testing process we realized that because of our previously large scope, we didn’t flesh out every aspect of the fitting room. There were aspects we did not catch at first like, giving the people sitting soemthing to do and making sure people trying on clothes have a place to set their items.

We had privacy issues to work on with the rack design and self image considerations when updating the mirror placement and design.

Refinement Testing

From the overall testing, we realized there was some refinedment testing we

needed to conduct. There was confusion regarding the rack and where people are supposed to put their items when they are finished in the fitting to asure they are going to the right place.

We did some further testing with just a rack setup by asking people to put items where they think they would go.

From this testing is where we found that the place you order clothes to while in the fitting room would be a whole separate compartment so the issue of privacy while in the room was improved.

(I was responsible for this testing)

In our initial testing, the kiosk system was not incorporated for the testers to interact with.

We then prototyped a smart mirror with a monitor built inside and began testing on the kiosk system and its screens.

We originally followed a model that looked like a website or app. There was a lot of density per screen and only a few of them. People were interacting with the screen with control coming from their shoulder and we realized that to be able to choose the options affectively, there needed to be more screens each with only a few options to choose from.

The Rack

People were nervous that new items would come as they were trying on. The “Yes” and “No” phrasing was not clear.
The “Yes” and “No” sections where too similar in form and size, causing confusion.

So we separated the oncoming clothes from the clothes already in the room.

The left half of the rack is where clothes are populated. The new clothes order through the kiosk to the fitting room come to a seperate door shown in the middle and finally the clothes people do not want are thrown in the bin shown on the far right of the page

The Seating Area

There was nothing new or exciting for the additional people in the fitting room. There should be a place to set personal items. What if we gave the people in the chairs an option to order clothes as well?

So we added a side table and a kiosk so that the people sitting could chose clothes t osend to the person trying on.

The left picture shows the custom chairs we designed for the space. The middle photo shows the table and the far right photo is highlighting the iPad kiosk for the seating people to take off and use to interact with the fitting room system.

The Divider

The people trying on clothes felt there was enough privacy with the curtain. People liked the swift curtain drawing motion.

It was important that we followed a consistent feel and visual language with the divider while also following the mental model of a curtian.

The Additional Elements

People need a place to put their personal items and lay out clothes. Lighting can be adjusted based on preference. Seating should be available for the person trying on clothes.

The Mirror and Screens

(I was responsible foor this development)

Floor to ceiling mirrors can lead to glare. Screens should have low-density options. The mirror can be used to order new items, avoiding
back-and-forth. 

The Screens

wireframes below

Video

(I was responsible for making the videos)

We wanted the 2 min video to be a simple explanation of how we arrived at the final design. Simple visuals and a nice voice over audio.
 

frame planning