PREFACE
The completion of my studies as a student at the Hochschule should not be the end of our connection. For the first time, I took on a project in the study programme UX design as a lecturer at Technische Hochschule Ingolstadt.
introduction
As part of their degree programme, every student has to take part in a cooperation project with a company in which they work on a specified topic. I represented my former employer MediaMarktSaturn Retail Group as a cooperation partner to work on the topics we were given. In the first projects a User Centered Design (UCD) approach, with a lot of elements of Design Thinking, was chosen for the development of Smart Shelf conceptes. This means that students should develop digital concepts to support customers at the point of sale (POS) in their purchasing decisions.
The following provides an overview of the my teaching part, the given tasks for the students and the results of the study projects.
user centered design approach
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User Centered Design (UCD) is a design philosophy that focuses on the needs, desires and constraints of the end user at all stages of the design process and development cycle. Products developed using the UCD method are optimized for the end user, and the focus is on how the end user needs or wants to use a product, rather than forcing the end user to change their behavior in order to use the product.
User-centered design is a common process in software development where the typical UCD activities are divided into four phases of the development lifecycle: Analysis, Design, Implementation and Deployment.
The international standard ISO 13407: Human-centered design process forms the basis for UCD. This standard defines a process over the entire development lifecycle, but does not specify the exact methods used for user-centered design.
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Tasks for the students
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Based on the questions…
What does stationary shopping of the future look like?
What information does the customer need to make purchasing decisions?
What would the customer like to be able to do at the shelf in the store?
What benefits can we offer customers at the shelf that they don’t even know they need?
…the task for the students was, within the User-centred design (UCD) approach framework to develop concrete concepts and design them in the end.
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Project step by step
​understanding the context of use and defining usage requirements
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EMPATHIZE
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The aim of the project was to improve the shopping experience of certain target groups defined in advance by MediaMarktSaturn. In the first step, specific user interviews were conducted in the stores in order to better understand the customer and to determine what their needs and problems are and who this customer group actually is.
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Teaching part: Training students in user interviews
Define
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With the results and a concrete target image of the customers in mind, the task of the students in this step was to concretise the customer image in the form of personas, to build customer journeys in order to visualise all touchpoints but also painpoints of the customers to MediaMarkt/Saturn and to develop customer journeys.
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Teaching part: Building target group personas, developing customer journeys
​develop concepts and test conepts
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IDEATE
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Based on the knowledge of the customer and the defined touch and paint points, the next step was to develop ideas in a creative workshop, evaluate them and transform them into concrete concepts.
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Teaching part: Introduction to creative methods for generating ideas, showing how to evaluate and select ideas and translate them into concrete approaches
prototype​
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Elaboration of the concept approaches into first prototypes, which are made available to the customer for testing purposes.
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Teaching part: Guidance for the development of prototypes
implement concepts
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TEST
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The developed prototypes were made available to potential customers (test users) in a „usability speed dating“ format. Hypotheses created in advance were tested in predefined steps and the results were noted. Subsequently, in a further loop, the prototypes were revised with regard to user feedback.
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Teaching part: Training in setting up hypotheses and the construction of usability testing and support during the user tests
finalize concepts
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design
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Conversion of the revised prototypes into a final design for presentation.
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Teaching part: Providing assistance in the design phase regarding design rules, using a styleguide and so on
target groups
Service customer
Digital
Native
Barghain Shopper
At the beginning of the project, the students were given 3 customer groups by MediaMarkt/Saturn to examine in more detail and to make digital products available for them at the end of the project that fulfil the needs of this group.
ideation process
On the way to new ideas. Here you can see an example from the creative workshop in which the students were forced to change their perspective. I wonder how Trump would implement my idea?
usability speed testing
With test users, the students had the opportunity to have their prototypes tested and to note down feedback in order to subsequently improve their product on the basis of this. The method used was usability speed dating, in which users move from station to station after a set time.
FINAL RESULTS
Comparision tabel - A Digital table to compare products with each other
Put 2 products on the table to compare them
Choose which factors are particularly important to you
Get comparision results
bundle concept
Store mode
Storyboard of the store mode
The smart comparison table allows the customer to compare products from the same range class with each other by simply placing 2 different products on the marked areas of the table. The products are recognised by the EAN code and information about the products is called up. With the help of filter options, customers can determine which factors are important to them and these are then displayed. Once they have decided on a product, they can place it directly in their shopping basket and pay for it. It is also planned that customers can log in directly to the table with their login data in order to generate points and use their desired payment methods.
The focus of the development was on the creation and customisation of bundle offers. Customers are offered touch points at every stage of their shopping journey, allowing them to switch to bundle creation at any time. Apart from enabling the stores to generate higher sales and offer their in-house brands in a prioritised way, the stores also gain valuable information about their customers, as the bundle price chosen by the customer is highly likely to represent the customer’s budget at the same time.
A smart shelf with app integration that displays previously missing technical details about the products and can help with the comparison between the products, thus contributing to a better-informed purchase decision. The transition point between the experience in the store and the digital comparison on the customer’s smartphone should be an NFC tag on the shelf’s price tag. After scanning several products, a direct comparison is possible within the application, which weighs the values of the technical details of the products against each other. In addition, the filter function serves to create an individual top list of products for the customer based on prioritisations of product details chosen by the customer. Finally, a payment function is integrated, through which a scanned product can also be paid for and taken away immediately.