Role Senior UX Designer
Deliverable iPad app for sales assistants of SK-II
Launched in Japan and China
Impact Monthly average of 100,000 impressions a month
Overview
SKII wanted to re-vamp the customer experience. We, at Huge Inc, designed and built a Super-Powered Assistant app, called SPA, to help improve the consumer-facing experience and also make SKII employees lives easier by managing their time and track their schedules.
Client: SKII | Project date: 2020
Role
My role was that of a Senior UX & Interaction Designer throughout the project cycle from requirements gathering to ideation and wireframing. I also collaborated with the Visual Designer team to brainstorm and solve the problems of our client.
Team: 2 Product Managers, 2 UX and Creative Leads, 3 Visual Designers and 3 UX Designers.
Problem Statement
- How might we create an engaging app experience to help grow and increase customer interactions for SKII?
- How might we help with the employee management of time and shifts through the application and reduce the overall physical paperwork and time taken to schedule?
- How might we provide statistics on how well a store is performing?
User Research
As this is a completely new product, we had to rely entirely on observation and interviews to determine the problems BCs face in-store.
Research (Observational)
The pilot app started in Japan before expanding into China and the Rest of The World, so we had contractors in Japan to observe the BCs from 3 different outlets for 2 weekdays and 2 days over the weekend (of 2 different timings each). We gave them a to-do list of what to look out for and recorded their observations on consumers’ and Beauty Consultant’s behaviors.
Research (Interviews)
- We had a two-day online workshop with SKII employees to understand the employees’ current challenges and pain points. We asked questions as to how they prepared the shifts for their employees. It was all being done on paper. We created a user flow to understand what happens when the store manager first walks into the store in the morning and assigns the shifts for the employees.
- We created a list of questions every week using Google Docs and sent it to the team in Japan to understand their process better.
Key takeways from user research
BCs fill in documents using pen and paper, which goes to the managers, then to department stores, and managers and back. We used these insights to better understand the problem and work on the user flow to provide the best solution for SKII.
User flow and journey map
We worked along with Product Managers, clients, and end-users to map out the current processes. SKII was using paper and pen to plan out the schedules of their employees. We retrieved the existing plan and worked on digitising and integrating it with the app.
User flow for SKII employees and customer facing app
Solution
Shift management
- Ideating, wireframing and prototyping the features – To manage their employees time and location of their shifts, we designed a Shift management system with the SPA app to help managers plan the various shifts of the employees.
– For the employees, it would provide them with a portal to request for certain store shifts and also apply for their paid time off. The manager would then be able to allocate resources based on the availability of the employees and their preferences.
– What was previously done over paper, email exchanges and verbal communication was now completely digitised and accessible for everyone within the team at the same time!
Inventory Management and Reports
Based on the number of appointments made on the app and employee count in the store on a day,
We designed a report functionality that would produce visual graphs and provide a number of sales and customer counts in a particular month and annually.
This was highly appreciated by the client as it helped them plan their resources and help with promoting and marketing more in the stores that were not performing as expected.
Results
During the regular bi-weekly check-in with the client, they were thoroughly impressed and happy with the outcome of the app. The app is currently deployed and used in SKII stores in Japan and will later be used in Korea, China, and other Asian markets.