How might we improve the fashion retail experience by connecting the traditional brick-and-mortar to the digital?

THS, a startup looking for investors, joined forces with INDT to develop a prototype of a smart hanger.

It would collect data to retailers and help customers get more information about products inside the store.

A technology-driven idea that needed to find its value to both consumers and retailers

Understand first, sketch later

The shopping experience through customers' and retailers' eyes

Understanding the shopping experience inside the store was the stepping stone to finding out what problems we should be solving.

First, a deep dive into fashion retail

There was a lot going on with Fashion retail. The main takeaway was that there was a lot of expectation of how digital was impacting the traditional brick-and-mortar fashion industry.

Mapping User Journeys and creating Personas

Qualitative research with consumers and retailers was conducted to map the current user journey maps. Quantitative research was also conducted with consumers to design personas.

Defining the problem

The User Journey Maps and Personas clarified the pain points and what problems should be addressed to both customers and retailers.

For customers

'I can’t find the products that I like and fit me well’

’It’s sometimes hard and time-consuming to decide if I’m making a great purchase’

For retailers

’Lack of visibility of how interesting my products are for my customers’

’Lack of visibility of my customers’ shopping preferences'

Activities and Outcomes

Activities

Interviews with customers and retailers
Online questionnaires with customers
Desk Research related to Fashion retail overview

Outcomes

Competitor Analysis
User Journey maps for consumers and retailers
One retailer proto-persona and two consumer personas

Designing a service

As we developed the user journey maps, a complex structure was unveiled that connected more people, processes, and touchpoints that we initially thought

Although we haven't gone deep with a more robust tool such as a service blueprint, we were able to design a solution that addressed relevant customers' pain points over the journey and visualize the value for both user and retailer. This allowed us to finally create a value proposition for the service.

Fashion Tech allows customers to:

‘Discover great product offers that match customers’ style and shopping preferences’

‘Be more confident when purchasing by assessing valuable information about the products they like.’

Fashion Tech allows retailers to:

‘Improve conversion rates by monitoring the buying cycle stages’

‘Improve customer relationship by offering personal recommendations that match the customers’ style and shopping preferences’

Activities and Outcomes

Activities

Ideation workshop with the team and client
Features mapping for all systems
Prioritization and estimation workshops with the team

Outcomes

Proposed User Journey map for the customer
MVP definition and initial backlog

Unfolding the experience

With a compelling value proposition and an initial backlog, we were finally able to go hands-on

Meet Kayla, a stylish conscious buyer

Goals

to be confident that she is making a great purchase

Pain points

a salesperson bothering her
going into many stores and not being able to find anything that satisfies her

Credits: Ron Lach

Kayla enters the store and Fashion Tech helps her to make a better choice

With the Fashion Tech app, she can:

view product recommendations
view campaigns and promotions
search products inside the store

By tapping her phone to the hanger she is also able to:

view product information such as available size, colors and description
view products that style with the selected one
like the product
view last seen products

The totem is another informative touchpoint

By hanging the product in an interactive totem, she is able to access the same product information of the app.

Outside the store, the experience lives on

After leaving the store, Kayla can receive special campaigns, promotions and recommendations of her favorite stores and the products she interacted with, liked and purchased in the store.

Meanwhile the retailer

The retailer, a data enthusiast

Goals

Offer a great Customer Experience
Offer products that interest the customers

Pain points

Lack of information on how to act when sales are not ideal
Lack of visibility of my customers’ shopping preferences

Credits: Ron Lach

The hanger is the enabler to monitor product views inside the store

One of the most valuable data that the hanger can track is when a product is taken off the rack.

It adds a valuable layer of information: product views, in a direct analogy to the data available in e-commerce.

A flexible system was designed to deal with different retailers' needs. Retailers were able to choose the data, a data container, filters and build personalized charts.

Fashion Tech helps the retailer to better understand her customers' shopping preferences

With the product views information, the retailer can:

Monitor conversions from product views to purchase

Better analyze how my products are performing

View the most successful combinations my customers explored

Create personalized campaigns based on the products the customer interested within the store

Lean documentation. Agile mindset.

SCRUM was a fundamental common ground for such a complex project, bringing cohesion to a team with different skills and paces.

The team adopted a lean online and centralized documentation available to the team and customer. Frequent and cadenced Design Studios were conducted with all team members to guarantee that everyone was in the same page, while the client checked the progress with incremental releases.

Activities and Outcomes

Activities

UI benchmarking
UI Design

Outcomes

UI Wireframes and navigation flows
UI Visual Design
UI Motion Design

The hanger design and engineering

Industrial Design was not a skill available in the Design team. Yet, we were able to design and engineer a working, polished and thoughtfully designed prototype.

INDT had a top-notch Hardware team and laboratory to engineer the hanger. On the other hand, I was challenged to design the hanger even though it was not a developed skill.

By following User Centered Design principles, in a trial and error process and having collaboration as a foundation, we successfully designed and engineered 6 fully working prototypes.