Digitising Convenience Stores
Introducing Service & Product Design into a Japanese consultancy
Summary
In 2019 we partnered with a leading management consultancy in Japan to help introduce Service & Product Design methodologies into their offering. In the context of consulting, Japan has a different approach to innovation. So the focus of our work was to integrate Design Thinking, User Feedback and Agile Methodologies to the team, demonstrating the value of our Service and Product Design process.
My role
I was the Service Design Lead on the project - planning and executing a proof of concept for a new offering. My responsibilities included designing and facilitating stakeholder workshops, training sessions, co-creation sessions, concepts generation, user interviews, prototyping and testing. Our team comprised of two developers, a strategist, myself and another designer.
Learning by doing
Since the objective of this project was both to teach and to create viable new product, we chose to co-run projects for some of the consultancy’s main clients in order to put the methods to practice and show the value of our process. We held a combination of working sessions specific to the project work, as well as mini training sessions where we would give our Japanese colleagues an introduction to the different methods. It was important to have them actively participating in the process - moderating user sessions, synthesising insights and planning future sprints. However it was just as important to give them a safe space to ask questions and understand how and why we were using them.
The Approach
1. Discovery
The client we worked on together was a prominent convenience store franchise in Japan. As part of the discovery process we conducted observation sessions in various locations of the chain and its competitors. We interviewed current and past staff members, store managers and store owners to understand the daily challenges they face. We also spoke with convenience customers to understand their problems, expectations and priorities.
2. Co-creation
In order to get a deeper understanding we included Lego modelling sessions in our interviews. We explored with customers what the convenience store of the future might look like. They shared their vision, their concerns and their hopes for what might change. Lunchtime queueing, automation and new, more welcoming spaces were among the many ideas we uncovered.
3. Concepting & Prioritisation
After synthesising our findings we created a range of concepts and ranked them according to their feasibility and testability in a short amount of time - we only had 6 weeks.
We chose to focus on helping busy customers navigate the lunchtime rush and franchisees to manage the spike in demand that it caused.
4. Prototyping and Testing
Two complimenting propositions emerged: pre-ordering with delivery to the office and pre-ordering with a fast track collection from store. In just 2 weeks we developed the first version of a mobile app for ordering and collecting of the food. In parallel we designed the processes to power the service - staff workflows, basic operational blueprints, orders processing, packaging, signage, labelling, storage, collection display etc. We tested the end to end service with users in a series of experiments where we gradually increased the volume of participants.
The Experiments
Our experiments were designed to gradually scale, introducing more complexity and pressure on the service. Starting with just 10 participants (5 in each study), then growing to 24 and finally to 100. What we wanted to learn from each study was different too.
The focus of the ‘Delivery to office’ experiment was to deep dive into the customer experience. We wanted to learn about and optimise:
The proposition of a restricted menu and fixed price
The convenience, speed and cost
The usability of the app when ordering
The ease of retrieving the order
The packaging and labelling
Reaction to replacement items
Designing the fast-track ‘Collection from store’ experiment gave us the opportunity to learn more about the operational feasibility of the service. We were able to set up a prototype in a real convenience store. This allowed us to gather rich customer feedback while working with staff to explore:
The ideal process of gathering, preparing and packaging orders
The speed of order preparation
The order preparation area in the store
The order collection area in the store
Handling stock and replacements
The best operational times
Product Optimisation
After each round of testing we held interview sessions with some of the participants and sent surveys to the rest. With the learnings we continuously optimised the application and updated the build for the following sessions. Our process was highly iterative and helped us tailor the offering as well as create an enjoyable and easy to use product.
Quick Pivot
While plans are absolutely key in our work, they sometimes have to change. As we finished our second round of testing in the end of Feb 2020 the number of COVID-19 cases in Japan began to rise. We considered it unwise to proceed with the 100 participant experiment as the whole world was slowly beginning to realise the scale of the pandemic. Instead, we focussed on analysing and synthesising our findings in a new plan for the full pilot of the service in the next year.