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
"Mobile is the first major platform where accessibility features are built in and mature."
Sam ProulxMobile Accessibility: Why Moving Accessibility Beyond the Desktop is Critical in a Mobile-first World
September 8, 2022
"Design thinking can feel like a magical black box or utterly overwhelming; it has to be made immediately usable and valuable."
Erin HauberDesign is Not the Frosting on the Scaled Agile Layer Cake
October 24, 2019
"Only people who work intimately in a space can effectively map that space; outsiders cannot produce useful strategy maps."
Simon WardleyMaps and Topographical Intelligence
January 31, 2019
"You have to give oppressed groups tools to fight discrimination, or you leave them in a place of victimization."
Yolanda RankinBlack Feminist Epistemology as a Critical Framework for Equitable Design
March 11, 2021
"Product managers are often prioritization focused, so they can bias themselves in research decisions."
Renee BouwensLanding Product Impact: Aligning Research as a Foundational Driver for Delivering the World’s Best Products
December 15, 2023
"We design with our biases and subjectivities, so we must work with diverse stakeholders to avoid tunnel vision."
Paul Pangaro, PhDSystems Disciplines: Table Stakes for 21st Century Organizations
June 6, 2023
"Check the people on the board and the advisors because that tells you a lot about the company’s true values."
Max Gadney Andrea Petrucci Joshua Stehr Hannah WickesAssessing UX jobs for impact in climate
August 14, 2024
"Helping your team take risks and stretch is critical even though design ops tend to be risk averse by nature."
Courtney KaplanTaking it to the next level: Career paths in DesignOps
November 8, 2018
"Design system decision records prevent knowledge being stuck in one person’s head."
Dan DonaldDesign Systems as a Vehicle for Systemic Change
June 1, 2023
