PROJECT NAME
POSS – Point of
Sale Software
DOMAIN
Retail – India's Top
Jewellery Brand
ROLE
UX/UI Designer
DURATION
15 months
STAKEHOLDERS
Business & IT Head
DESCRIPTION
A solution to help the staff be efficient & empower them to serve customers better inside a boutique
BUSINESS REQUIREMENT
- Increase the efficiency in workflows by 40% for our employees
DESIGN GOAL
- To achieve efficiency in workflows and propose an omnichannel solution for employees to solve customer needs
OUTCOMES
- Saved 4 to 5 hours daily (nearly 80%) for the employees & empowered them to perform day to day tasks in a more pro-active & effective way. Right now the solution is in beta version inside stores.
It all started with a personal experience…
Visited the Jewellery store for my friend's sister pre-wedding shopping back in early 2019
My pain points:
- We had to wait for staff to show and let me know the prices.
- As the prices are checked on the systems, the staff asked us for consolidated items which we have selected
- - The options were less, wanted to see more variety, which I got after going to a different store. Took me more time to explore that physically.
- Delay and no clear response I felt about the estimated time for a customised product, like engraving on a ring
- No clear communication about the discounts and what benefits I can avail in becoming an encircle customer
- Took me 3 hours to buy a ring and a necklace with many hiccups of price checking, options to explore, customisation, discounts, profile creation, as all of these, were fully staff dependent.
I strongly felt that the experience must be redesigned and thought out
much better and transparent for the customer. This had to do with how
empowered are the staff there.
Got to know that Mindtree was going to pitch for the POSS
So shared my interest with my Design manager with a concept of Self price checker and was on the project in 1 month. Thanks to my Manager Akshay.
Started to understand the people behind the scenes in the boutiques and
warehouse and their complex workflows, which are more physical/manual and less digital.
Started understanding the users & their ecosystem…
Let's understand RSO now
The major problems for RSO, (after talking to 10) which I wanted to solve was majorly more accessible options, needed to provide informed accessible data to converse with customers & optimising their workflows, as a team, with respect to the profiles which he works with directly, like the Cashier
______
Unique findings
1. RSO does 70% of the task which a Cashier also does
2. Customer can do 30 – 50% of the task which an RSO does
3. Keyboard interactions are something which they are used to and 70% of the time do not use the mouse.
1. How the RSO can be well equipped with the price details for the customer?
2. Can an RSO prepare on the go the Initial Cash Memo to reduce the effort of the Cashier & save time for the customer? Can he know about matching items, too?
Concept exploration & iterations…
3. Can an RSO address customisation & estimate queries for customers in a more effective way, rather than just depending on the factory & giving tentative quotes?
4. Can the customer check basic info (like price, custom/not, similar products, gold rates, etc) when exploring options inside the store, without much dependency on RSOs (as due to covid the staff is less)? – Endless Aisle
Understanding the journey & problems for BOS
The major problems for BOS (after talking to nearly 14) which I wanted to solve was findability, effective & easy verification of products while in warding, pro-active planning for Inventory management and quick access documentation & reporting
Unique findings
1. BOS takes 2 – 3 hours to review data which they already have.
2. 70% of the inventory spaces are not brightly lit up & don't have systems
3. 60-70% of the time, the tablets available in the boutique are not used for day to day tasks by the employees
Let's understand the Inventory guy (BOS)
1. How BOS can be well informed for his next inventory plans?
Wireframe Iteration 1 – Without Sales trends
Wireframe Iteration 2 – BOS needed sales trends (preferred)
2. How can he receive stock effectively & efficiently?
Wireframe
3. How BOS can effectively monitor & manage stock in-store?
Wireframe
4. How BOS can issue stock with all informed approvals?
Wireframe
Visual Design
Accessibility achievements
1. Keyboards interactions were considered as a major interaction
2. Dark & light theme considering the lighting & environment around
3. RSOs/Attenders were more accessible to prepare the CM
4. Customers felt more accessible to data which they needed
5. Mobiles & Tablets(RWD) were used to break digital dependencies and barriers
6. Font sizes can be increased to 2 times
7. Font colours tested and changed to darker colours for the top navigation bar.
Usability testing & findings…
Got a rating more than 8 on 10 for the overall experience, and saving good time so they can work for more value, 'satisfying their customers'. But ratings does not matter, as qualitative feedback matters most.
Some of the UI Variations done…
1. A darker & lighter option considering the environment & lighting around
The rationale behind this was:
1. BOS tends to spend most of their time in the Inventory warehouse inside the boutique, which might not be fully and brightly lit up, so switching to a darker version is comfortable to the eye (as Research says)
2. Option to change it according to their preferences
3. Saves battery while using on Tablet in dark mode, not great, but an added advantage (Samsung Tablets have AMOLED screens). Research
While testing with 5 users, we found out the darker version had high contrasting whites, so we suggested an option for users to down the tone of whites, 2 times for the darker version, but they preferred black as it is more clear content which they can view.
2. Notifications with easy findability & actionable
3. Product card UI explorations
4. Help section was essential, initially when employees adapt to the new POSS
5. Landing page which gives a brief and a clear understanding of why a redesign has been done for them
6. Illustrations included for more better feedback to users, as waiting time is little more than usual for stock transfers
7. Went ahead to design the print format with QR included for easy find-ability in the tablet or system
What I would have done better now?
1. Would have simplified more for the product detail page for the tablet first.
- 2. Would have conversed with more users(>15) to get a second version of content priority & hierarchy for them, in the proposed flow, for the next iteration.
- 3. Data for Cashier, to give analysis about his/her's CM time taken and show potential improvements with AI, where he/she can optimise more pro-actively