Amanda Designs Things

RESERVE & TRY IN Store

Reserve & Try in Store was released in Washington Nordstrom stores on October 4th, 2016. It allows customers to reserve products at their favourite Nordstrom location using the app, and then come in and try them out without paying. Confident purchases equal happier customers and fewer returns.

Platforms: Android, iOS (iPhone & iPad), in store registers (desktop & mobile), general in store experience.

By far the biggest project I was on while at Nordstrom, the creation and launch of the Reserve & Try in Store service was a long, intensive process. As Design Lead on the project, I designed the online flow for customers to make their reservations and also coordinated with marketing and store teams to design the end to end customer experience, from browsing on their phone to walking out of the store with their purchase.

Due to the scale of the project, the newness of the service and the number of potential touch points involved, I conducted a significant amount of discovery work to ensure we started this project on the right foot. A selection of this work is shown below.

Collaborating with UX Research, we conducted competitive analysis to give us a gut check of the current retail landscape. It was relatively small at the time, with most competitors focusing on the "Buy Online & Pick up in Store" payment angle, instead of a free reservation service. With not many services in the market, we were able to try out each one through to the point of purchase, as well as run remote studies against them with external customers to get a gut check on how the competitors' experiences resonated with them.

Involving representatives from all disciplines that would eventually work on the Reserve project, Design, Research, Dev, PM, Analytics, et al came together in a room to brainstorm on Post-its what a customer's journey could look like.

We worked together to define the steps in "Gabby's" journey (our selected persona for Reserve) and within those steps we brainstormed potential design ideas and captured important questions, assumptions and comments. After digitizing the exercise, it was an important tool to kick off the rest of my process.

For both the customer facing app experience and the corresponding employee tools needed for Reserve to function, I did a lot of sketching and whiteboarding to flesh out concepts and understand the proper flow of information. Each platform presented unique design problems as the customer app experience was net new, while the employee tools required a new service with new tasks to be added to a notably old UI and technology. These went through numerous UX peer reviews and meetings with other disciplines to ensure my direction was solid and technically feasible.

Storyboards were used as my main storytelling tool, especially when presenting to executives and leadership, as it quickly gave an overarching view of how I expected the customer's journey to flow. Additionally, it helped others to understand the choices I had made by giving them context in a greater experience.

The storyboards were updated throughout the entire design and development process to act as a point of reference while things continually changed and evolved.

While working through flows and designs, I met regularly with other teams such as Marketing, Store Design, Store Signage, and Store Management to develop out the customer story. I reviewed all their deliverables to ensure a consistent voice and feel throughout the whole experience.

After a year and a half of extensive design and collaboration, we had created a service where marketing placements led customers to my app designs which directed them to a polished in store experience, all with a cohesive voice throughout.

Marketing was done through local Washington store social networks, such as instagram and Facebook.

Video password: Reserve

The final Reserve & Try in Store app flow

Once a reservation was initiated from my redesigned product page, it collected a minimal amount of customer information, validated their phone number (so that status notifications could be texted to them) if they were a new Reserve customer and then let them know what their next steps would be while employees searched for their reservation.

As employees located reservations, they would scan them into an employee tool. Backend logic would determine if the customer had any other reservations, holding off notifying them for a period of time if there were other items they were waiting on, in an effort to not spam them. Then, they would be texted once their reservations were ready. They could also follow along in the Reservation List I designed in the app.

When the customer approaches the store that has their reservation, two notifications trigger. The customer gets a text message giving them additional next steps and direction, while the employees get notified that a particular customer is on their way.

This store-side notification means that while you, as a customer, are making your way over to the Order Pickup area...

Employees have the time to sort through racks of reservations, find your items...

...and have your reservations ready in a fitting room at Order Pickup, awaiting your arrival.

A major goal of Reserve & Try in Store was to make it a convenient, fast, low-touch experience. We achieved this with a preset fitting room, labelled with your name, meaning that you can be in and out of the store in a matter of moments. The Order Pickup area is staffed with non-commissioned employees who are there if you need them and leave you alone if you don't. All of these details were the result of months of usability studies where a UX Researcher and I followed customers through demo store experiences. We collected extensive amounts of feedback that we were able to use to collaborate with the store teams on our final streamlined experience. 

The response in Washington was positive, customers speaking excitedly about the convenience level with a particularly strong response coming from moms on the go. Construction for stores outside Washington had begun at the time of my departure and Reserve & Try in Store was slated to roll out in waves across the country over the next year.

Unfortunately, the project was sunset years later over pandemic.