80 years ago, the bar for a retail experience was low. A simple shelf in a gas station was enough to display our company's initial product line. Today, that won't cut it. Today's designers have to incorporate scores of inputs, from how our customers encounter our products online and in the real world, to multiple departmental budgets and timelines converging around a campaign. In this environment, it's easy for customer perspective to get lost. And yet customer experience is more important than ever. "Experience" is the secret sauce that will save physical stores from Internet giants. For designers, experience can be an overwhelmingly broad and loosely defined concept that is dependent on context and requires a rich understanding of the people for whom we are designing. As leaders within our company's design and research teams, we’ll walk through our experience research and design approach via a case study of REI’s recently redesigned camping department. We'll share this process in detail: understanding customers in their authentic context; comparing information behavior in the physical and digital worlds; fostering customer-centricity on diverse design teams; carrying this empathy through physical space design, prototyping, and iteration; and navigating the politics of experience design.

1. People,
Not Percentages
Research & Design For Cross-Channel Experiences
by Allan Kempson, Nikki Easterday, and Stuart Maxwell
presented by Stuart Maxwell, Lead Information Architect, REI
@stumax, turninggrille.com
Slides: bit.ly/peoplenotpercentages

2. Austin buys a tent
Part One

3. Everyone,
meet Austin.

4. Austin is going
backpacking and
wants to buy a
new tent.

5. He starts looking
for tents online.

6. Austin goes to
the closest
store.

7. Austin finally
talks to an REI
employee.

8. The employee
saves the day!!

9. How can we make
this better?

10. This is an
information space.

11. People,
not percentages.

12. A process for design
Part 2

15. We started as a
specialty retailer.

16. But we
started to act
like a Big Box
retailer.

17. We need to get
back to our roots.

18. Allan Kempson
Manager, Customer Experience Research
and Design (CX)
Nikki Easterday
Experience Design Manager, Store Design
and Visual Merchandising (SDVM)
Meet Allan
and Nikki.

20. Store Design / Visual Merchandising
Customer Experience Research
Physical Architects
Retail Operations
Store Employees
Merchants
Digital Retail
Outdoor Adventure & Programs
Senior Leadership
Stakeholders for
designing a
physical space

21. The process
Part Two

22. 1. Stakeholder
interviews

23. 2a. Quantitative
customer research

24. 2b. Qualitative
customer research

25. 3a. Affinity
diagramming
workshops
Phase one:
store staff

26. 3a. Affinity
diagramming
workshops
Phase two: HQ
stakeholders

27. 4. Allan
presents
research
findings to
Nikki

28. 5. Architect
Design
Development
(but first study all the things)
CX research
Stakeholder research
and requirements

29. 6. Share with
leadership; get
their input

30. 7. Refine

31. 8a. Build a low-fi
prototype and iterate

32. 8b. It’s messy.

33. 8c. It gets worse.

34. 8d. It gets better.

35. 8z. It gets done..

36. 9. Bring in-store
employees and
customers to test

37. 10. Iterate again

38. 11. Build in a
pilot store (It
gets messy
again).

39. BEFORE

40. BEFORE

41. BEFORE

42. AFTER

43. AFTER

44. AFTER

45. AFTER

46. 12. More
research

47. 13. Iterate and
continue to refine
for more stores

48. Findings and actions taken
Part Three

49. 1Finding
Why people come
to the store

50. 75 - 88% of customers start shopping online

51. Customers visit a store to touch, feel, and sense

52. Customers come to the store to get questions answered

53. 1Solution
Self-Service
Education

54. Experience the product

55. Promote conversation through experience

56. Finding
A hard time
finding
2

57. Customers had to wander the gondolas

58. Solution
Activity-based
product display
2

59. We flipped the taxonomy

60. CAMP SHOP
TENTS STOVES COOK GEAR LIGHTING
CAMPING
BACKPACKING
CAMPING
BACKPACKING
CAMPING
BACKPACKING
CAMPING
BACKPACKING

61. CAMP SHOP
CAMPING BACKPACKING
TENTS
STOVES
COOK GEAR
LIGHTING
TENTS
STOVES
COOK GEAR
LIGHTING

62. Visual wayfinding

63. AFTER
Visual wayfinding

64. 3Finding
Decision Trees

65. Solution
Decision Path
3

66. Solution
Decision Path
3

67. And it works!

68. What we learned
Part 4

69. You can’t empathize with a statistic

70. We need to work hard and fast to
understand the customer

71. Intellectual needs vs. sensing needs

72. We need to rethink our taxonomies

73. Involve everybody in the process

74. Involving everyone helps you as much as them

75. We framed the experience with
objective measures

76. We brought clarity through a customer-
focused understanding of the experience

77. Where do we go from here?

78. The challenge for Digital Retail

79. Take what we learned and move forward

80. 1 Invest in
mixed-methods
customer
research
Take what we learned and move forward

81. 1 2 Involve
everyone in
everything
Invest in
mixed-methods
customer
research
Take what we learned and move forward

82. 1 2 3 Focus on
people, not
percentages
Involve
everyone in
everything
Invest in
mixed-methods
customer
research
Take what we learned and move forward

83. Thanks!
by Allan Kempson, Nikki Easterday, and Stuart Maxwell
presented by Stuart Maxwell, Lead Information Architect, REI; @stumax, turninggrille.com
Special thanks to: Mahsino Blamoh, Jordan Cordas, Louise Maxwell
Slides: bit.ly/peoplenotpercentages
All images ©2016 Recreational Equipment, Inc.

84. Discussion

85. The cutting room floor

87. We go backpacking!!
We go
backpacking!!