FAB Ideation “Reimagine Retail Experience” Report

On 02 July 2020, we held a FAB Ideation session at FabCafe Hong Kong. The fifth in a series of events, in which we discuss important design challenges and explore solutions together through fun and creative Design Thinking activities.

The topic of the evening was the shopping experience of customers in retail stores. Retail is a typical case for applying Design Thinking, in order to understand the mindset of customers, deconstruct and analyse the customer journey, and improve the customer experience. But opposed to many outdated ideas on consumer behaviour, we instead tried to consider the new consumer trends that have led to increased awareness of sustainability, authenticity and brand transparency. Retailers must adapt to this New Consumerism if they wish to stay in the game, which often means rethinking their entire service model.

We began the session with an Opening scenario, which helped to establish a clear design challenge along with some insights into the type of customer we are designing solutions for.

We then spent close to an hour working on the Customer journey map. During this exercise, we first brainstormed all the activities that might happen when a customer is shopping in a retail store. Then, we identified all the touch points which the customer encounters during those activities. Finally, we considered all the pain and gain points that the customer might experience. In this process of deconstructing the customer journey, we have systematically analysed almost every aspect that contributes to the customer journey, including some which we had never previously imagined.

We selected some of the pain points and turned those into a statement that begins with How Might We. This type of statement is an effective way of reframing the problem, that does not imply a particular solution, but which enables creativity.

For generating ideas towards a solution, we used a method called Brainwriting. Each participant was given a piece of paper with a different trigger word written on it (Digital, Physical, & Environment). The participants would then write ideas on the paper inspired by the trigger word, then rotate the papers, and repeat writing more ideas. This method allowed the participants to quickly throw out many ideas and build on top of other’s ideas.

As the last exercise, we further developed the ideas by using Storyboards. With the storyboards we created a visual narrative of a new and improved customer journey. These helped to communicate how our ideas would affect the customer’s actions and their emotions, and ultimately improve the shopping experience.

Many thanks to our participants for joining the session.
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