Video Prototype

Video Prototype Group 6

Meet “Lock & Roll”. It is the world’s first smart locker that revolutionizes the timeworn retail experience.
While interviewing store managers and customers alike, we discovered a discrepancy between the customer’s need to touch and try a product before buying and the convenience of home delivery that online shopping provides, and smaller stores in particular can’t match.

Our idea aims to bridge that gap. By making it possible to deliver anything you put in the locker to your doorstep, you do not need to carry your heavy shopping bags around in the city or your big suitcase home when travelling.

All you need is a smartphone and our App and an account which holds the information about your address as well as your bank account for a fast and easy payment. The App is very easy to use as it guides you through every step of the process. Just by standing next to one of our lockers, it will use your current position to tell you how many vacant lockers are located nearby. After clicking „Open a Locker“, you are asked to choose between four possible locker sizes. Next it is possible to either select „Pick up Later“ or „Deliver it to me“. When the second option has been chosen, one of our Lock & Roll employees will deliver your belongings right to your doorstep just a few hours later.

After our video-prototype, the next steps are a field test to get more informations and data about the needs and problems our future customers will have.

– Hook your holographic book –

During our research and interviews, we noticed that bookstores must fight more and more for their customers. The clear majority of customers are regular customers, they come from the immediate vicinity of the bookstore. Hardly a bookshop has regular customers from outside.

Our idea, the holographic book Hook, will change that. It’s an attraction for the bookstore, something unique that convinces customers to shop in this bookstore, even if they have to go the extra mile. In addition, it not only gains interest in the bookstore, but also in the book itself, especially among young people.

The holographic book has a special cover that can play events. This can be a book scene, a trailer, reviews, or something completely different that draws attention to the book. This scene is then rendered in the form of a hologram.

Exhibited in the shop window, the scenes played arouse the interest of pedestrians who stop to watch and then enter the shop. On display in the store, they give a brief insight into the book, helping customers choose a book. So, the bookstore can also expand its regular clientele with customers who happened to be in the area, and now, thanks to Hook, prefer this bookstore.

After creating the video prototype, which gives a first glimpse into our idea, an actual prototype is the next step. Testing the prototype in the field and observing its impact on customers will help improve Hook. Other interviews with bookstore owners and customers can help as well.

VIDEOPROTOTYPE

In our research, we observed that the sense of community has played a big role in why customers visit the store. That is why we conclude that customers have the need for social interaction and community. We asked ourselves how we might create a sense of community in every type of store.
That’s how we came up with our Concept which is in this case for a bookstore. But it is also easy to translate that into other types of stores.

The bookseller creates a book exchange event in his shop on a platform. The customers get a notification through the app. The special feature is that the app displays which books the other customers offer for exchange. You can scan your own books and also offer them for exchange. If the offer appeals to you, you can participate in the event. For this you pay a certain amount of money for which you get a coupon. In the store you can now exchange your books and look for new books and buy them with the coupon.
Customers have the advantage that they can see which books are offered and only participate in the event if they are interested in the offer. In addition, they can meet other book lovers in the bookshop and talk with them.
For the bookseller, the advantage is that people will become aware of the store through the book exchange event and buy something from the coupon if they participate in it.
The next step would be to introduce this concept to the user group to see how they like the idea. If a few retailers are interested, we can create a prototype and test it. Through interviews and evaluations, we can get feedback on the prototype and implement the feedback. This is an iterative process and can be repeated often.

Music: https://www.bensound.com/

Videoprototyp

UX3 Videoprototyp Team 2

Das Ergebnis unserer Entwicklung war eine App zusammen mit einer anderen Art, die Prozesse im Einzelhandel zu strukturieren. Diese App erlaubt es, die Vorteile des Einzelhandels hervorzuheben, welche aus dem Kundengespräch und der Möglichkeit des Testens besteht.

Um die Vorteile ganz nutzen zu können ist eine radikale Umstrukturierung des Ladens erforderlich. Im Laden selber liegt dabei nur noch jeweils ein mit NFC-Tag versehenes Teil der Wahre, während die zu verkaufenden Stückzahlen im Lager liegen. Der Kunde geht nun mit der App in den Laden oder bekommt ein Leihgerät zum Scannen und kann dann entweder Beratung anfordern oder Dinge einscannen. Am Ende kann er sie “bestellen” und bekommt sie direkt aus dem Lager entweder in eine Art gemütlichen Wartebereich, der im Laden integriert ist oder bei Möglichkeit nach Hause geliefert.

Für den Kunden hat dies den Vorteil, dass er sich wirklich über die Wahre informieren kann, etwa in Bücher reinlesen, Dinge ausprobieren und testen. Er hat eine größere Auswahl an Produkten und kann jederzeit Beratung in Anspruch nehmen, aber nur wenn er sie wirklich brauch. Der Verkäufer hat den Vorteil, dass er weiß welcher Kunde beraten werden möchte und dass er sehr gut sehen kann, welche Produkte wie verkauft werden.

Um die App zur Marktreife zu bringen müssten nun Prototypen für sie entwickelt werden. Dann müssten Umfragen und Tests mit der entsprechenden Nutzergruppe durchgeführt werden. Wenn klar ist, dass die Idee funktioniert und angenommen wird kann begonnen werden, sich konkrete Überlegungen zu Umsetzbarkeit zu machen und Anforderungen festzuschreiben, z.B.: Wie kann der Scanvorgang umgesetzt werden?.

Videoprototype

Through our on-site observations and interviews in small physical shops we got valuable insights about the needs of storeowners regarding their problems in digitalization and logistics. In the following phase of ideation we collected our observations, sorted different underlying problems in clusters and found and refined solutions. Our most significant question was:

„How might we support retail owners to share knowledge, experiences and properties among each other?

Our solution to this issue is the website RetailRescuers, which creates a network among retail shop owners. Thus, they are not only no longer completely on their own regarding managing their shop business, they also have a platform to turn to in case of questions or problems. This website comes along with several features to make a storeowner’s everyday life easier. In special chat rooms you can talk to either other retail shop owners and exchange trends, experiences and advises or trained support staff, which tries to help you with their best knowledge and conscience. The community is also able to host networking events for its members to connect with each other in real life to establish mutual trust. The tutorial section offers a multitude of online tutorials about commonly occuring problems of retail shop owners. One of the most powerful tools of RetailRescuers is the store sharing option where shop owners can offer parts of their store space to others in order to share rent, costs and manpower and increase the customer base.

Our next steps would be presenting the website and video prototype to the aimed user groups and gathering their feedback. With the obtained information an over-worked and now usable prototype would be developed. Then the user groups would be observed while working with RetailRescuers. In this way, hidden or unrealized problems would be identified. There is still a long way to go but if our vision comes true, we’re sure it will make the life of retail shop owners a lot more comfortable.

Videoprototype

Scanventory

As we’ve mentioned in one of our earlier blog posts, we decided to develop a product dealing with the digitization of inventories. We believe in the necessity of this product because we’ve noticed during our user research that businesses (smaller ones in particular) shy away from a digital inventory as they assume that it’ll cause a higher workload. The final idea we came up with is a software tool that enables a user to scan either a single product or a collection of multiple products, adding them to a digital database simultaneously.

With the help of this technology it will be a lot easier for retail stores to catalog their inventory. The main reason why the usage of our software is not a hardship, ís that the scanning procedure is as simple as taking a picture of the product. In case of scanning multiple items, for example a bookshelf, you can just take a picture of that.

The software processes the picture to identify the items and gathers all available information to be added to the database.

If desired it is also possible to easily set up an online ordering service. Through this, the online presence of the retail shops is extremely improved. Furthermore the attractiveness of the store to customers increases.

This leads to yet another advantage for the store’s customers. They can now simply get information, for example about the availability of products. This avoids dissatisfaction of customers who came to the store looking for a specific item, but were unsuccessful in purchasing it.

Das smarte Regal

Nach unseren umfangreichen Recherchen war für uns neben den zahlreichen Insights ein Punkt besonders von Bedeutung: Unsere wichtigsten Punkte sollten sowohl von Kunden- als auch von Nutzerseite beleuchtet werden. Folglich haben wir uns für das folgende Insight entschieden: “Das Nutzererlebnis und die Kundenzufriedenheit ist überlebenswichtig für Geschäfte im Einzelhandel”. Im weiteren Verlauf haben wir uns damit beschäftigt, ein angenehmes Einkaufserlebnis sowohl aus Kunden- als auch aus Verkäufersicht zu generieren. Dadurch entstand die Idee des smarten Regals. Dieses besteht aus zwei wesentlichen Features: Ein Knopf um Beratung zu rufen und einem Sensor, welcher erkennt, ob ein Regal leer ist. Beide Features sind mit einer App verknüpft, die den Verkäufer benachrichtigt, wenn ein Kunde Hilfe benötigt oder ein Regal aufgefüllt werden muss. Dadurch möchten wir folgende Probleme beheben:

1. Der Kunde fühlt sich zum einen nicht durch aufdringliche Verkäufer belästigt und kann sich in Ruhe umschauen, zum anderen kann er um Hilfe bitten, falls diese benötigt wird.
2. Der Verkäufer kann seine Aufgaben sinnvoll strukturieren und auch während der Ladenöffnungszeit z.B. Lagerarbeiten erledigen, bis er von Kunden gerufen wird oder ein leeres Regal befüllen muss.

Dadurch kann Arbeitszeit gespart werden und der Kunde kann nach Bedarf Hilfe anfordern.

Im weiteren müsste der Video-Prototyp den Nutzergruppen vorgestellt werden. Deren eingearbeitetes Feedback kann anschließend in den neuen Prototyp eingearbeitet werden und ein neuer Prototyp kann erstellt und getestet werden. Diese Schritte können beliebig oft iteriert und verfeinert werden um im ständigen Austausch mit Auftraggebern das weitere Vorgehen für eine technische Umsetzung vorzubereiten. Gesamt beinhaltet unser vorgestelltes Produkt ein physisches Regal mit Sensorik, einen Knopf um Beratung anzufordern und eine App, die Features verknüpft und ein Interface für den Verkäufer bereitstellt.

Concept – Group 6

During our user research we discovered that many people like ordering online, because it is more convenient for them to have it delivered to their doorsteps. Still, many people also prefer going to the store to get consulting and to be able to see and touch the product before buying it.

We wanted to come up with a solution that would draw people that order online – because of convenience reasons – into retail stores, while also making it more convenient for people to buy more in one go when going to the city.

Our solution is called “Lock&Roll” and we offer lockers that are placed nearby malls, shopping centers or in the downtown. Users have the ability to lock their purchases away so they have their hands free to shop more. But most importantly, we also offer a delivery service for a small fee. Users can simply lock away all their shopping bags, can walk home with free hands, and have all their bags delivered to them when they arrive home.

CONCEPT GROUP 8

During our research, it became obvious that especially young people find bookstores and books boring. In the following days, we developed various ideas to make bookstores and books attractive again.

The idea that finally prevailed is a holographic book cover. While holding the book, elements shown on the cover move. For example, they show a scene that appears in the book, or even a trailer designed specifically for the cover. This allows customers to get a brief impression of the book in a short period of time. In addition, the holographic cover draws attention to the book and is supposed to gain the interest of potential customers. Books displayed in the store window attract the attention of pedestrians who stop and look at the illustrated scene, giving them an incentive to enter the bookstore and buy the book.

We believe that this idea will make books interesting again, as well as encouraging young people to visit bookstores and buy and read books again.

Concept Group 4

After our interviews in different retail stores our group came to the conclusion that it is important to improve the costumer experience in a store whilst also helping workers with their daily tasks. We developed three ideas for products that could serve this purpose. 

One idea we chose to dig deeper in is a smart shelf. It automatically detects when a product is out of stock and alerts a worker to fill it up. In addition it has a button that a costumer can press If he needs advice about a product. The shelf is linked with a mobile device that every employee carries around so the employee will get all the informations immediately.

This product would help the problem of product availability and make a purchase more enjoyable as a costumer would not feel like employees urge him to buy anything because he is only advised about a product if he wants to be.