The Client & Project Information
Apple Store is received numerous awards for its service design which lets the customers try, play and buy the products. This system also supports the sale assistants to use all the physical and digital touch points in their stores to welcome the customer and answer their needs.
There are also premium resellers, department stores and shop in shop as a apple sale point which provides slightly different experience then apple stores. Apple wanted us to work an proof of concept that will extend the apple store experience to all the sale points and support the sales assistants with the on the spot payment features.
My Role
The project team was group of 10, consist of project manager, business analysts, interaction designer, visual designer and developers. We collaborated with Apple Dubai Office during the project and project was presented to Apple London office in January 2016.
I was part of the pitch team and responsible for the experience strategy and design of the app. Due to tight deadline I worked with 2 other UX designer. I planned the process and led the UX work by doing research, producing all major deliverables and presenting these to the client between August 2015 and December 2015.
Planning & Scope Definition
I organised a workshop to define project scope with all the stakeholders and the PM from Apple. I found a balance between customer goals and business goals. I prioritised and negotiated features for POC.
Customer Insights & Ideation
I partnered with a project managers and one other lead designer to do field research and uncover insights and translate concepts into features that address users’ behaviours and motivations.
Design Execution & Validation
I designed iPad app stick with the native features of apple to extend the existing experience. I executed user interview, journeys, sketches and high fidelity prototypes.
The Challenge
Unifying Customer Journey And Experience Throughout All Channels
The aim of the project was providing a tool for instant support and information while being able to checkout on the spot with the assistance of a Salesperson. The local commercial and regulatory environment could be different across countries, so the system needs to be modular to different geographies. We had multiple different stakeholders depending on the features such as, instalment option, carrier packages and trade in. The combination of a fixed deadline and multiple stakeholders meant we needed to be agile and get the experience and strategy right in the first few sprints.
The Strategy
Transparency Simplicity Empowerment
Building trustful relationship at the every crucial step of the journey and sharing information; taking the pain away from any interactions and ensuring each moment is seamless; and empowering the customer with the right information and insight at the right time were our core aims.These motivations were help us to define design principals; Transparency, Simplicity and Empowerment.
Being Agile
Apple is the company that every agency wants to work with. We wanted to provide a flawless work in a limited time. As a team we decided to occupy a meeting room and reflect all the outputs of the project on the wall and make it more visible. Instead of well-documented process, we proceed with sketches and we improved interaction on the visuals and development process.
THE DESIGN PROCESS
LOOKING
Observing Human
Experiences
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Desktop Research
Trend Reports
Stakeholder interview
Field Reseach
UNDERSTANDING
Analysing Challanges
and Opportunities
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Design Principles
Salesman Interview
Customer Journey
Sketch Workshop
MAKING
Envisioning Future
Posibilitis
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Information Architecture
Wireframe
Prototype
Product Execution
More About Process
LOOKING
The project was started with online research to have better understanding of apple store’s strategy and digital movement of retails.. We outlined retail trends from the significant news we collected. After having some background info about the subject, stakeholder meeting was arranged with key stakeholders to understand their business challenges. To observe the difference of experience, we visited apple store and premium reseller store in Istanbul and we had chance to talk with salesperson in both stores which provides us valuable insights. These insights were proved that we were in right direction.
UNDERSTANDING
The design principles were defined with a collaborative workshops. Dubai was selected a pilot area for the project. After agreed on design principles, to gain first hand information we did field research in Dubai. We had interview with premium stores’ and apple stores’ salespersons. We analysed or insight and observation and we generated customer journey which helped us to communicate our outputs, gain alignment and decide proposition value. I organized sketch workshop to turn our ideas to interaction solution. We evaluated all the sketches and eliminated according to feasibility of them.
MAKING
I started to design interaction of the app on paper with my manager and we delivered only sketches to our visual designer. Apple has a strong guideline in terms of visual and interaction, which also limited us with the native component. Due to time limitation, we have developed only scripted scenario screens. Micro interaction such as page transitions and animations were defined during the development process. Working in the same room end to end and working in agile were the key points of our output. We delivered iPad app working with mock data on the stated date.
The Launch
An Extension Of The Apple Store Experience
The ideal customer journey simplifies the decision making process by providing the relevant information to the user and reduces the click through rate to content/check-out. We designed an iPad app that consumers can quickly assess pricing and promotional offers aiding their decision process during the sales process. Another feature is added to enhance the journey is session capability. It’s critical that the Sales companion app will be able to aid both the Salesperson in assisting multiple customers but also for Customers to have time for their decision making process. Each user session a customer will have their own basket while allowing the sales rep to assist with several customers at once. Depending on the local market conditions, customer journey might require partial re-touch for local payment capabilities and instalments availability. So here is the modularity became critical. The information architecture was designed to be suitable for modularisation. The proof of concept was succeed but the project management team decided to change pilot country. Due to regional restriction, another company took over the project.