Levi's In-Store Returns
INDUSTRY:
RETAIL TECH
COMPANY:
LEVI'S
DURATION:
8 MONTHS
ROLE:
LEAD PRODUCT DESIGNER
about.
Why are we building this: Consumers prefer to return their e-comm purchases in-stores to avoid the return shipping fee. Because of dated technology, the process was stressful and time-consuming for our store employees (“Stylists”) and end consumers.
Goal: Create an application on the point-of-sale (“POS”) device that will allow Stylists to perform returns for e-commerce orders in under 2 minutes.
Constraint: POS devices were old and dated. The monitors had poor contrast, and navigation was terrible.
challenge.
To understand current pain points and user expectations, we surveyed and interviewed store stylists and surveyed end consumers. Altogether, we learned:
Consumers and stylists expect this interaction to be simple and quick (2-3 minutes)
Consumers are extra attentive since we’re dealing with their money. In turn, store stylists are extra diligent about addressing consumers’ questions and/or concerns
Store stylists need expert-level knowledge about this online order in a very short amount of time to provide accurate discount and refund information
During the busiest return season of the year (around the holidays), there are more inexperienced seasonal employees who usually learn by observing year-round employees
There are many technical difficulties stylists face when working with the dated POS devices – monitors have terrible contrast, systems were slow, and there wasn’t the affordance of a typical computer mouse.
Returns should take 1-2 minutes. Scan a barcode on the pack slip. Pick the return. Return the funds. Done!
design.
To help with discussions with the team, I used the insights gathered from the surveys and store visits and created a flow chart and basic structure for the application.
Together with the the engineering, product, and business teams, we refine the information architecture based on technical feasibility and business goals without compromising consumer expectations. After noting all the limitations of all the different API calls needed to get the right information to users at the right time, I created adjusted my mocks accordingly.
Wireframing & Testing
The tight timeline of this project required design to run parallel with the engineering discovery work and business need refinement. In other words, I was designing with business requirements and development limitations changing weekly. Staying with lo-fi wireframes for as long as I could was key since I was able to work quickly to be flexible with this team.
After countless design reviews and testing in our internal labs (which housed the exact POS computers the stores have), the designs were ready for user testing. With help from our UX Researcher, we conducted 2 rounds of user testing we with store associates using clickable prototypes, iterating after each round of testing.
result.
Beyond winning Levi’s 2020 Impact Award that year, my pride and joy came from hearing directly from users after the launch of Easy In-Store Returns: it was a hit!
One of the key take-aways from this project was involving stakeholders and decision makers as early and as often as possible. During this project, I pushed to have weekly design reviews with product and business stakeholders, a new concept at Levi’s. The team was initially hesitant, but quickly saw the value in these meetings as we were able to have discussions and make decisions quickly.
From the close contact with these stakeholders, I was able to establish great working relationships long after this project had been completed. As part of a small UX team in a company where “UX” was not a well-known term, these relationships were incredibly vital to establishing our presence and value to the company.
