Log in or create a free Rosenverse account to watch this video.
Log in Create free account100s of community videos are available to free members. Conference talks are generally available to Gold members.
Bridging Physical and Digital Spaces: Approaches to Retail Service Design
Summary
Retail presents a uniquely exciting environment in which to discover service design journeys at the intersection of physical and digital spaces. What role can store employees play in the development of new technological processes? How can we engage with this environment and its people in a meaningful, impactful way? In this community videoconference, we cover approaches from a UX research and strategy lens with REI as a case study, and reflect on the challenges faced in this space.
Key Insights
-
•
Successfully prototyping PCI-compliant in-store devices requires creative partnerships with infrastructure teams to deploy controlled test builds in real store environments.
-
•
Physical paper prototypes can effectively simulate digital interactions to test complex service journeys in situ, revealing pain points impossible to spot in lab-only testing.
-
•
Employees who are also customers and outdoor enthusiasts bring valuable expertise that should be treated as a core asset and voice in design decisions.
-
•
Cross-disciplinary collaboration, including unexpected contributors like QA testers with store experience, can surface breakthrough ideas and solutions.
-
•
Building accessible, inclusive internal repositories for sharing research insights fosters widespread organizational learning across siloed teams.
-
•
Storytelling with real user faces, names, and videos strengthens empathy and connection between design teams and end users, especially across distributed organizations.
-
•
Enterprise constraints—like store layout variability, staff scheduling, and internal politics—compel adaptive, flexible designs tailored to different contexts.
-
•
Reframing retail employees as partners rather than mere users dramatically improves engagement and feedback quality.
-
•
Balancing design innovation with business goals and organizational bureaucracy is challenging but can succeed through transparent communication and strategic storytelling.
-
•
Enhanced employee adoption (126% increase) of the Mobile Selling Assistant demonstrates the impact of human-centered, iterative design despite limited resources.
Notable Quotes
"The store mobile device is the indispensable silent partner enabling store employees to balance task productivity and customer engagement."
"We could impact the end-to-end customer service and customer experience through our most underutilized asset: our store employees."
"No one really knows what to expect anyway, so failure goes largely unnoticed. It's better to be transparent about the mess."
"Every person on your team matters. Find actionable ways to include and share findings with anyone who will listen."
"Physical prototyping is a tool to explore interaction modalities and physically connected environments beyond all things digital."
"It almost feels like cheating because your users are showing and telling you what they need. It's almost too easy."
"Being able to see faces and first names of people we're learning from makes those users tangible to the team."
"The constraints in enterprise pushed us to focus more on an employee-centered approach for product decisions."
"In large organizations, soft skills are the hard skills—it's all about how you connect with humans and express your core values."
"We created a simple WordPress site so all corners of the business could contribute and share insights, breaking down silos."
Or choose a question:
More Videos
"Mergers and acquisitions require us to carefully avoid pitfalls when unifying user experiences."
Uday GajendarTheme 1: Introduction
June 9, 2021
"Advanced quantitative methods can amplify our work in ways we didn’t expect, and also show us how to get started."
Megan BlockerTheme 2 Intro
March 12, 2025
"The chaos of undocumented processes makes it hard to build useful AI workflows; mapping and blueprinting help."
Tina WeisserWhen AI Agents Meet Reality. Service Design Lessons from a Pilot
February 26, 2026
"If nobody owns the onboarding experience, it likely won’t get done or get the energy it deserves."
John Calhoun Rachel PosmanTwo Sides of the DesignOps Coin: Teams Ops and Product Ops
January 8, 2024
"Space is congested, with thousands of satellites and tens of thousands of debris pieces orbiting Earth."
Michal Anne RogondinoSaving Outer Space: The First UX Design System for Our Nation’s Satellites
January 8, 2024
"Some old fashioned solutions bring new problems for Istanbul."
Onur Kocan Ayhan EnsiciUnderstanding the Strategy for Civic Design in a Complex City: Istanbul
November 16, 2022
"Prompting is a specialized skill, just like statistics or in-depth interviewing; the wrong wording can bias your results."
Llewyn PaineCoexisting with AI: A practical guide for researchers to navigate tools, ethics, and integration
March 11, 2025
"Community engagement is a powerful lever often left out of systems thinking processes."
Sheryl CababaExpanding Your Design Lens with Systems Thinking
February 23, 2023
"We intentionally did not email listservs or go on Twitter because that would have delivered a group that is too tech-savvy."
Marisa BernsteinIt Takes GRIT: Lessons from the Small, but Mighty World of Civic Usability Testing
December 9, 2021
Latest Books All books
Dig deeper with the Rosenbot
How can I structure research documentation to ensure insights are easily retrievable and actionable?
What are the core UX research tools essential for managing participant recruitment and study logistics in large companies?
How do cultural beliefs and stories influence maternal health practices and care outcomes?