Future of retail experience — Wellements
Experience Design, Innovation, Customer Journey, Stakeholder Interview
Wellements is a pop-up apothecary store with two components; a multi-sensory store and an inevitable digital website. The two components are complementary and can work/function individually to create a holistic unique experience for young adults seeking organic wellness solutions to stay healthy.
PROJECT OUTLINE
Time: 4 months
Scope: Define the opportunity. Create Personas based on qualitative research. Design the physical and digital experience. Create a prototype and test the idea.
Target Group: Young professionals in the Bay Area (25-35 years old).
Product or Service: Pop-up Store for a digital and physical apothecary experience
METHODS
Street Intercepts
Shadowing
Expert Interviews
Journey Mapping
Information Architecture
Mockup and Prototyping
TEAM
Vanessa Hernandez, Satwik Polkampally, Sittidej Somprakit, Stacey Fisher, Ehsan Darbandi
PROCESS
Research > Framework of Opportunity > Secondary Research > Design Research > Refining the Concept > Testing > Prototyping > Testing > Micropilot Testing
MY ROLE
UX Researcher
UX Designer
Design Researcher
Usability Testing
Prototyping
PROBLEM
In retail stores, usually, people are confused and overwhelmed by too many choices, lack of clear information, and trustworthy assistance. This creates a poor retail experience with high attrition rates.
CHALLENGE
How might we create an engaging, personalized, trustworthy experience for customers buying natural remedies?
SOLUTION
Wellements is a modern, multi-sensory pop-up. Wellements provides goal oriented and customized organic remedies at pop-ups, located in the high-traffic locations around the city. The two minutes online quiz provides the right remedy based on the lifestyle and needs of the consumers.
DISCOVERING OPPORTUNITIES
RESEARCH
In order to familiarize ourselves with the domain and current apothecary services and products, we gathered information from various types of apothecary stores. We group the stores in four different types, Chinese apothecary, traditional apothecary, natural drugstores, apothecary with an adjacent service like tea shops and beauty salons.
We gathered information from more than 15 stores. We Used Methods such as scanning, street Interceps, observation
“ I’m interested in natural remedies, but going to traditional apothecary is overwhelming . There are so many products and not enough assistance. Usually I leave the store without buying anything.”
Male, 34
“I don’t think these products are completely natural, it is just branding. You can find most of these products at Walgreens or Whole Foods. “
Female, 38
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Engagement
Millennials’ lifestyle value experiences and they are willing to spend more on engaging experiences.
Customization
Millennials are willing to spend more time and money on personalized products or experiences.
Trust
Millennials are leaning towards products and services that are transparent and provide usable information.
CURRENT STATE JOURNEY MAP
We used User Journey framework to map-out the current experience and the pain points of the customers and identify opportunities to innovate and create new experience for customers.
CONCEPT DEVELOPMENT
STORYBOARD
After gathering information and synthesizing for insights, our team diverged and created multiple storyboard. We thought out of the box as much as possible and tried not be limited by the current solutions in the market. We considered any type of technology or innovation in order to solve customer’s pain points and foster their experiences.
Concept 1
Concept 2
TESTING THE CONCEPTS
We tested our storyboards by interviewing potential customers. We used their feedback to see what is working and what is not working. Finally we consolidate all information and created one storyboard.
SOME REACTION WERE:
“The fact you’re giving me something natural where I work is great. I would use it a lot.”
“I’m really interested in customized herbal remedies at a shop. I hadn’t seen it before.”
“I felt the AR experience is overwhelming and unnecessarily complex. “
“I enjoy selecting the natural ingredients and learning about how the remedy was made, But I don’t not feel comfortable creating my own product.”
“Love the follow up because it leads into prevention, not just solving the problem of the moment.”
WELLEMENTS CUSTOMER JOURNEY
People get a notification when there is a wellements pop-up close to them or they walk up to one of the pop-up locations. through the app they answer to ten question about their lifestyle, their feeling and their needs. at the end of the quiz they can choose a fast solution on a fully customized experience of making their remedy. if they chose the customize experience, an apothecary creates a remedy mix for them while explaining about each ingredients and how the remedy effects their body. if they chose a fast solution, they come and pick one of the ready made remedies that the app has recommended. The branding language and the information on the packaging provides information that are useful and easy to understand for the customers.
VALIDATING THROUGH THE BUILD
IN-DEPTH INTERVIEW THROGH PHYSICAL AND DIGITAL PROTOTYPE
We build a prototype, out of iterated storyboard. We interviewed target customers by demonstrating the experience circulation. we asked open ended question about their thoughts.
SOME REACTION WERE:
“The structure of the pop-up makes it visually interesting and feels very enticing.”
“Open shelves mean that “grab-and-go” patrons would be looking right across at the other patrons when picking up their meds.”
“Relationship with traditional vs western medicine is unclear (wellness vs health). Lack of clarity makes customers uncomfortable.”
“Smart slab is superfluous(unnecessary)”
“Low shelves might be a problem and the space is too tight.”
“I don’t understand the value of customizing a remedy.”
MICROPILOT TEST
We were uncertain about some aspect of the pop-up. We build a micropilot to test our hypothesis.
Methods used:
Moderated Usability testing
A/B Testing
Contextual Inquiry
HYPOTHESIS
People value having multiple levels of engagement to create personalized remedies.
Traditional apothecaries are overwhelming and confusing and our experience alleviates those pains through a guided experience.
The phygital experience would be so seamless that customers would love it.
WHAT WE TESTED
What levels of engagement do people value the most.
Can someone go through the phygital experience intuitively.
When do people prefer a customized experience over the convenience of a pre-made remedy and vices-versa.
KEY TAKEAWAY
Low fidelity prototypes are valuable. During the Wellements design process, low-fidelity prototypes helped our team to better communicate with each other and stay aligned by focusing on the areas that mattered.
Personal bias can easily influence user research outcomes. Constant internal check-ins were necessary to prevent our biases from influencing and leading the user research.
Although Millennials appreciate customized products, answering to detailed questions could be critical and increase drop-off. We tried to ask the minimum number of questions to get the maximum business value through customization.