MY ROLE: Experience Design Director, Symplicit

Responsibilities

Client liaison and stakeholder management, managing the research team, scoping the project, planning and scheduling research work, managing the budgets, hands-on conducting research, research and design deliverables QA

Objectives

Review instore customer behaviour and evaluate the effectiveness of the new concept stores in facilitating customer tasks and meeting needs, informing and inspiring customers about exciting new technological futures and sparking spontaneous product purchases.

Approach

• Evaluate customer sentiment around the new concept stores – L&F, ambience, space and flow, wayfinding, service experience
• Evaluate customer’s level of awareness, understanding, retention and recall of instore content and messaging
• Understand customer’s instore experience with different store zones and evaluate usefulness, engagement, comprehension and perceptions
• Evaluate how well the new stores facilitated customer’s goals and task completed
• Identify and map information seeking behaviours to determine gaps and pain points
• Identify information needs and expectations for different customers in a range of scenarios

Deliverables and achievements

• Spent 1 week on the ground and 5 and 1/2 days per week (including Thu nights and Sat mornings) at each store location (6 stores in 4 cities – Sydney, Melbourne, Adelaide and Brisbane)
• Conducted between 100 – 150 instore “vox pops”, shadowing exercises and short surveys with customers, and 1:1 interviews with staff at each location
• Synthesised and analysed large volumes of data on the fly to draw out and feedback insights in real-time for the client
• Continuously iterated on focus areas and questions to ask during intercepts on the fly to ensure ongoing research remained relevant and useful, and to explore any issues arising on the ground that had not been considered previously
• Delivered strategic recommendations for instore improvements to enhance customer experience and engagement

Key metrics

• Number of qualitative “research “vox pop” sessions conducted with customers at each store
• Quality of data set collected