In 2017, a recently-acquired chain of several hundred convenience stores across the southern United States had undergone a change in leadership, and wanted a compelling strategic lighthouse that prepared their stores, staff, and leadership to meet the future head-on.
We partnered closely with key stakeholders in our client’s executive leadership team [pseudonymously called Waypoint] to bring a distinctive, market-leading vision to life over the course of our six month engagement.
https://player.vimeo.com/video/800983432?h=dd7e59e8ef
We conducted primary and secondary research into customers’ unmet needs and current perceptions around convenience stores, and engaged in contextual inquiry through working alongside employees in two stores.
Phase One Deliverables: · Full-color, bound book of debriefings from 18 customer interviews, with actionable insights and frameworks from analysis of customer and employee interviews
Phase One: Interviews with customers
We applied insights learned through immersion in customers’ and employees’ contexts to design and build a 1:1 scale experiential prototype of a “store of the future” to test the ideas inspired by their unmet needs.
Phase Two Deliverables: · 1:1 scale prototype of the “store of the future” built from foamcore with integrated digital hardware · Full-color, bound book of recommendations from 22 Resonance Tests with customers of the spatial prototype · Spatial renderings to guide architecture and construction partners on how to implement the most resonant, high-impact ideas
Phase Two: Building the experiential prototype
→ Conceived of both in-home ethnographic and physical prototype research approaches → ****Conceived of and helped design interview stimuli for both phases → Developed screener and led recruitment of 40 qualitative interview respondents (18 in Phase I, 22 in Phase II) → Led research and analysis in both phases, mentoring both team members and clients in research methodologies and guiding them as they led their own interviews → Assisted with editorial design and creative direction for books for both phases
... and critically, figured out how to fit an incredible number of potted plants into our rental car, bringing some realistic detail to our experiential prototype
🥗 healthy offerings ☑️ “convenience” 🤝 local connections**
Based upon the insights from these foundational conversations, the team proposed testing a set of 11 different ideas to reimagine the client’s convenience stores so they would let customers take a "Better Break” that satisfied not just their functional needs for safety and healthy offerings, but also their emotional needs for connection, relaxation, and entertainment. Amongst the 11 ideas of a prepared foods section with three variations, a frictionless payment experience section with four variations, different product mixes and experimental inventories, a green space for exercise, and various types of experiences at the fuel pumps.
The focus of Phase One was upon more deeply understanding customers and employees. Following alignment with the client around overall direction of the project, we brought them along with us as we set out to gain a deeper understanding of their current and potential customers, their unmet needs, and how those customers saw their brand and offering in relation to their competitors’.
While the client wasn’t initially considering explicitly the needs of employees in their future store design, I advocated for the additional time and resources needed to engage in full-day contextual inquiry with employees in two different stores so that we could also more deeply understand and incorporate their unmet needs into the store of the future.
In addition to managing the recruitment and logistics of all eighteen interviews for Phase One, I also led the design and refinement of the Learning Goals and Interview Guide questions, as well as the creation of the exercises meant to help respondents explore and express their preferences and unmet needs more clearly.