Industry: Retail
Featured Methods: 1-on-1 Usability Testing
, Field Interviews
A nationwide outdoor apparel retailer was planning to roll out in-store kiosks in order to reinforce their strong brand image and to allow customers to gather more information about products, order items that weren’t available in stores, and learn about how professional athletes use the products. The kiosk provided users with a touch screen and a rich media interface, which included detailed product information, photos and video. The retailer, along with their agency who designed the kiosk interface, had deployed the system in two pilot stores and soon intended to place kiosks in all stores nationwide. Before taking that step, it was important to understand if and how customers interacted with the kiosk and identify ways to ensure its success in the stores. In particular, the design agency wanted to understand what parts of the kiosk interaction were most compelling to users and to identify any road blocks or areas of confusion that users might encounter.
In order to gather usage information from a representative sample of customers, we visited both of the pilot stores several times, for a total of 27 hours. We scheduled store visits at different days of the week (weekdays and weekends) and different times of the day (lunch time, off-hours and evening). Our research was divided into two phases. In Phase 1, we observed from a distance to understand how many customers noticed, approached, or interacted with the kiosk. In addition, we tracked what customers were doing just before and just after their interaction with the kiosk. In Phase 2 we directly asked customers questions about their kiosk usage and gave some specific tasks to perform. This phase allowed us to gather usability metrics and understand users’ detailed thoughts about the interface.
The observational sessions of the research showed us that customers were not approaching the kiosk as much as had been hoped. Many customers had seen the kiosk but assumed it was for employees only. We also noticed that many customers didn’t notice the kiosk at all because it was located as customers entered the store when they were looking for the section of the store they wanted rather than looking for product specifics. Based on this information, the retailer was able to significantly increase kiosk usage by locating them in more optimal locations and adding additional signage. The facilitated sessions with customers allowed us to identify interface successes and challenges that users encountered. For example, some aspects of the product navigation were confusing to users and did not allow them to easily back up to pages they had already seen. We also found that some users had trouble with the search functionality. When a search returned no results, it was unclear to the user if they had run the search incorrectly or if the store didn’t carry the product they were seeking. The design agency was able fix the remaining issues and moved forward with a successful national roll-out.
