Shop Floor App
About: Shop Floor app is a part of Store of the Future innovative omnichannel solutions by Farfetch, which are designed for luxury fashion brands. This B2B iOS app is developed for Sales Associates (fashion advisers). The pilot version was launched in 2018 for Chanel (Paris), Browns (London), and Thom Browne (New York). The app is linked to the holographic display, knows the amount of stock, has customers profiles with the previous history, customer check-in for 1-o-1 servicing, items RFID scanning, checkout, and payment to make end-to-end purchase process for the customer.
Role: Product Designer (generalist), paired with two other Product Designers, user researcher, and development teams, PM and PO.
Duration: 3 month
Services:
- Design Strategy
- UX Research
- Prototyping
- UX Design
- Value Proposition Design
- Data Analysis & Synthesis
Problem:
sales associates have a limited stock inventory within their brand and can’t fulfill a missing product to complement the client’s look.
Strategy and Approach
Mapped up user flow and brought with first assumptions
The PO and I developed a typical use-case: a customer shops in Browns London boutique. The size of the item he wants to buy is not available in any Browns warehouses. Sale assistant enters Farfetch’s global stock integrated to her Shopping Flour App, finds and orders the item in other US brand for the client to complement his look.
After reviewing the flow with engineers and PM, we split it into main steps and focused on the catalog and product browsing, as it could allow us to test fast core ideas with minimal technical effort. Payment and delivery and post-purchase were the next pieces in the pipeline.
Prepared information architecture
After discussing the tech feasibility, I designed a simple information architecture of the first deliverable, which we defined. I showed at which point we can introduce Farfetch stock and how the user can navigate among his brand and Farfetch network. The filters on the product search result screen would be the entry point to control stock points availability and origin. And the Product Details page would give more granular options to select from which stock the user wants to order the item.
Designed the prototype
I designed the prototype using an already existing app UI. Through the filter in product search results, the user could select from which stock he wants to see the items. We added the option to search across the current location country level and globally within the Farfetch network. The results would be filtered automatically by the user’s current location proximity. So, if SA is located in London, we would find for her requested item from Farfetch London network brands.
If the user didn’t set stock in filters she could do it in the Product Details page. Here we had several dependencies:
- Frafetch brands had different prices for the same product;
- the price could change depending on the product size within the same brand;
- international orders could cause the currency change.
So, I detected that size effected product inventory, stock availability, price, and currency change. In this way, I used size as a dynamic filter for the listed options.
To uncover the truth about our hypothesis, I set up 1-1 interviews with 6 sales associates from 2 different brands. As a result, the pain-points were:
- the price difference for the same item within different brands;
- price and currency change during payment;
- payment ownership when SA is placing the order for the client;
- the delivery time before stock point selection;
- returns ownership – to which boutique should the client refer;
- find and order the item through the expended stock easily;
After I synthesized gathered insights with earlier conducted surveys and analytics data, I realized that developing one part of the user experience won’t satisfy her needs. Eventually, we invalidated our MVP idea. As a result, I made the design proposal, which included tech blockers removal and preparation of app architecture on the first place to be able to provide end-to-end customer experience.
Next steps
- Remove the legacy code to scale the app faster.
- Build and test end-to-end prototype flow based on discovered needs.
- Define the first deliverables.
- Build UI.
- Develop a strategy for further quantitative research.
Key learnings
- Initiating user interviews on the project discovery and exploration stages helped to disprove several core assumptions. It evoked the company’s mindset shift towards a user-centric approach.
- When each team member is involved in every project stage, it helps to be aligned along all way of product development.
- Sometimes failing helps to win more.