Optimizing target curbside pickup
During the User Experience Design MPS Program, a class - UX Tools - was instrumental in beginning the collaborative work process by encouraging our teams to work on Industry Products to encourage improvements to the Industry Standard. The members of my team included: Shawn Wydra, Jilene Jackson, Elana Teodoro and myself. As a part of my collaborative team - I was able to work in many roles such as; UX/UI Designer, Researcher, Content Strategist and Accessibility Specialist in a fast paced Agile Design Sprint.
As a team, we worked collaboratively to help improve the experience for the Target Team Members.
In a time of Social Distancing, Guest Experience is key and in high-demand; for Target Team Members, being able to complete an order for a Guest Pick-Up is crucial, especially when Target receives 200-400 Drive Up Orders per day.
By improving the quality of Target’s Curbside Pick-up and implementing a socially distant Cubby System for guests - this not only helps Target Team Members feels safe but also improves the quality of customer service for Team Members while continuing to give back to the community.
Roles and Responsibilities
As a Designer and Content Strategist, I was able to bring my prior knowledge as a retail employee to our prototype in order to provide key insight to some of the pain points retail employees face everyday and key additions to the ideal wishlist that we’d all like to have when fulfilling orders in the store. I also contributed to the User Personas, Lean Canvas, Story Map, Design System, Wireframes, Prototype and overall Usability Testing, Case Study and subsequent Presentation.
As the UX/UI Designer for the redesigned Target Employee - Curbside Application; I was able to make Key Desicions in the Development of our new app, such as:
Consolidated Order Information into collapsible accordion menus in order to simplify a users screen as they go throughout fulfilling the order.
Created Congratulatory (Instant Gratification) Screens in order to track the items scanned in an order
After some discrepancies, I conducted an overall check of the prototype links on order to confirm the prototype’s success in Usability Testing
As the UX Researcher for the application, I was able to make many decisions in our Research Phase like;
Conducting Usability Tests and Interviews with current retail employees and implemented their feedback in order to create an application that fixes pain points across the board
Supplying First Hand knowledge of the retail experience, pain points and the overall mindset of an employee fulfilling orders on a daily basis - especially when we didn’t have access to Target Team Members
As a Content Strategist, I was able to create content and make more Key Decisions for the Target App; like,
Changing the Target Tracker and adding animations based on the overwhelming feedback that users were omitting the Target Tracker.
Conducting overall content checks of the verbiage on each screen, the Case Study and overall presentation
After User Feedback, created Target Tracker Animations, using my background in Animation and Interactive Media, in order to draw interest from our users in another iteration of the Target MyDevice Prototype
Revising the initial workflow and adding two experiences for users to choose in order to offer a sign on and direct option for Target Team Members
Finally, as an Accessibility Specialist, I was able to use my experience in the retail space as well as my background in Animation and Interactive Media to;
Conduct Accessibility Checks via Wireframing and Prototypes in order to ensure ADA Compliance for our current and potential users
Quickly apply User Feedback from Usability Testing to ensure there would be no risks of sensitivity with Animations and Color Compatibility
Ensure that Team Members fully understood recorded changes in the Wireframing and Prototyping stages in order to ensure Quality control of the product, as well as, ADA Compliance
The Challenge
As the world comes to a pause and masks are becoming the new norm, curbside pickup has revolutionized the way society does retail and grocery shopping.
Knowing this, Team IV’s goal for the design is to improve the quality and safety of their Target Team Members. As a Target Team Member, it can be difficult to fulfill a Curbside Pick-up Order when you’re not notified of the Guest’s order status. As a collective, we’ve come up with the Target Tracker to simplify and ease the process of fulfilling orders as employees deal with large volumes of orders throughout the day.
In addition to the Target Tracker, we’ve added a Cubby Feature to separate Guests orders along with a Curbside Preference Feature for Guests to select their contactless delivery method to their vehicle to social distance as much as possible during this unconventional time.
We’ve came up with the How Might We Question to address through our research and design phases;
How might we enhance the ease of fulfilling Drive Up (curbside pick up) orders for Target employees like Target Travis?
Finally we’ve come up with goals to work towards in the development of the redesigned Target Application;
Goal 1: Understand the behaviors and needs for TARGET employees who seek to fulfill curbside pick up orders.
Goal 2: Solve problem of a labor intensive workflow for TARGET TRAVIS when fulfilling curbside pick up orders.
Goal 3: Solve need for TARGET TRAVIS to be updated in real time utilizing the Target Tracker.
Research and Analysis
During the research and analysis phase, 15 users were interviewed based on their prior experiences of using Curbside Pickup from retail establishments, such as Target. Interviews took anywhere from 15 to 45 minutes with our users - during our time together we focused on their experience with Curbside Pickup in the past, their positive and negative feedback as well as their wishlist for an updated application. After the interview process, an affinity map was created in order to compare and contrast our interviewees experiences and find aspects of application that would be the most beneficial to develop for our users.
So what is our solution?
During the beginning of the Design Phase, we created a Lean Canvas in order to nail down a solution and design with our users at the top of mind for the next iteration of Target Curbside. In addition to our solution, we outlined Key Metrics, the Unique Value Proposition, User Segments and High Level Concepts for our application. The solution we came to as a team based on our User Research is;
Pickup lockers/particular area/cubbies for orders for customers to pick up items.
Store order tracker (Target Tracker) – Similar to Domino’s Pizza Tracker
App will house Shopper and Employee version of the tracker.
In order to design for our Key Users, we outlined and refined User Personas for our users - being the Target Employee, Travis and the Target Guest, Tina. These personas were crafted from the data collected in surveys, interviews and research in order to create a design for our specific users, Travis and Tina, and their needs. After our personas, we crafted the Story Map for our Target users as well as the User Flow. Both steps allowed us to design for our User’s Wishlists and outline the Journey for the Target employees specifically.
Design Phase
As a team, we brainstormed using Crazy 8 and User Flow Diagrams. Our key goals for the design was to make it user-friendly at first glance, validating the employee’s needs through gratification while keeping the brand loyalty of Target’s signature color scheme.
Before creating High Fidelity Wireframes, a full Design System was created in order to support the Target Application and its redesign in the next iteration. The Style Guide includes: icons, fonts, typography, iconography, elements and imagery to create High Fidelity Wireframes ready to be prototyped and tested via Usability Testing.
Utilizing our style guide and the Material Design System was our team designed sections of the Target Travis workflow to create High-Fidelity wireframes that were based on scenes from the team’s Crazy 8’s sketches of Target Travis’s curbside fulfillment workflow.
High Fidelity Wireframes
The goal of the high-fidelity wireframes is to iterate on the low-fidelity wireflows with more detailed features like color, components unique to our design, transformation of the wireframes into a clickable prototype. The Target Tracker feature also received the high fidelity treatment and further tests the idea of a user’s ability to track curbside orders in real time with live clickable actions. The prototype accomplishes a workflow that is less labor-intensive and helps Target Travis fill curbside orders more efficiently.
Prototyping
The prototype was designed within the Target employee app and website. The goal of the design was to maintain the brand loyalty by preserving Target’s original color scheme, iconography, and typography referenced by the Target website.
The Target team uses myDevices through android’s operating platform. As a team, we maintained Target’s Material Design elements while implementing additionally to the design system such as the social distant curbside and cubby feature. Once the prototype was discussed and refined, the team presented the design system to a series of users for additional feedback.
Testing Phase
After the creation of a working prototype, we tested the prototype with 3 previous interviewees remotely over Zoom and received numerous pieces of feedback in order to refine in the next iteration of the Target Application.
During testing, we came across a handful of glitches that needed to be patched and reworked. The most notable changes that needed to be made were that the Tracker needed to be moved elsewhere from being pinned on the top of the screen which cause the Tracker to be unobtrusive to users. As well as, recreating and reworking the cubby’s legend/key so that it’s more comprehensive to the users. Now that we’ve completed our newest iteration, we’d like to re-test the prototype amongst a more focused group, primarily consisting of employees who would be theoretically using this application.
Some of this feedback and changes include;
Users expressing screens were “too long”
The beginning Flow was Redundant
We redesigned the Target Tracker
Cut down the ‘Congratulatory Screens’
Reselected the Cubby Colors
Implemented Animations into the Target Tracker
After making these necessary changes, we’ve outlined Next Steps in order to move forward with this project;
Step 1. Kick-off with a second round of Usability Testing; in order to work out any user discrepancies during the first round. The end goal is to test out the iteration of our prototype.
Step 2. As a team, adding and redefining our goals; doing another accessibility check and iteration of the prototype after a second round.
Step 3.Usability Testing round. Presenting our application modifications to Target Executives in the hopes that it will be used by Target Team Members in real-time.
Step 4. We also recommend conversing with a development team to check the feasibility of engineering and coding our MVP prototype system.
