Service Design for Dick’s Sporting Goods
Trueshoe
Personalized Shoe Recommendation Service
Team TrueshoeCathryn Lin, Manvi Gupta, Anurag Mishra, Adam Wang, Gaurav Manchanda, Elias El Kozah
My Role:Researcher, Service Designer
Project Duration: Sep 2022 - Dec 2022
CMU HCIIService Design 2022 Fall
SkillsUser Research
User Testing
Prototyping
Service Design
Wireframing
Client:Dick’s Sporting Goods
My role
I was part of a student team to design an innovative service for Dick’s Sporting Goods. In this project, I took the role of researcher and service designer. In particular, I conducted interviews, led the idea prototyping, and took charge of the wireframe design and movie design.
What I practiced & learned
Rapid prototyping and testing
Apply visual thinking to client service
Incorporating client & speed dating feedback
Professional concept pitching
Dick’s Sporting Goods Service Innovation
Dick's Sporting Goods, Inc. is an American sporting goods retail company, based in Coraopolis, Pennsylvania. The company was established by Richard "Dick" Stack in 1948. Dick's is America's largest sporting goods retailer, and it is listed on the Fortune 500.
In Fall 2022, DSG collaborated with CMU HCII’s service design class.
The challenge:
In-store experience service innovation for DSG
From our first meeting with the client representative, we had a brief idea of the objectives of this project:
Improve customer satisfaction and loyalty
Improve employee efficiency in assisting customers
Future envisioning with technology innovation
Trueshoe
Solution:
Customers of Dick's Sporting Goods who now shop there and have a loyalty card will be catered to by the solution.
We save the customer's profile, interests, and personal influence elements, such as their brand preferences, using the shop card.
Bluetooth or the unique ID on the card would be detected at entry and notify the teammate as the customer enters the store.
The colleague approaches the consumer, utilizes the preferences to initiate a discussion, and suggests the shoes that would fit the customer the best based on their profile.
The teammate updates the athlete's profile with their preferences from the store visit, which is utilized to enhance the recommendation model and deliver recurring recommendations on the athlete's smartphone.
After that, the athlete can explore on their device and go to a store to test on shoes.
Research Process:
We conducted research including
After gathering quality points and potential areas of interest, we used affinity diagraming techniques to generate common insights to generate solutions.
12 Athletes
7 Teammates
2 Stores
3 Friends & Family
To conduct guerilla research at Dick's Sporting Goods stores, we personally visited the stores. We visited the stores in Monroeville and Waterfront to test the service at several locations. We walked around the store, learning about its layout, observing athletes as they made purchases, observing colleagues as they offered assistance, learning about the many technology services the company offered, etc. After visiting the store, we conducted interviews with athletes and teammates using our research guide.
Guerilla Research
Competitive Analysis
Contextual Interviews
Parsing Online Reviews
Key Insights：
DSG has a loyal customer base:
We interviewed more than ten customers and discovered that most were repeat customers. They have been Dick's Sporting Goods customers for many years. To be precise, all the customers we interviewed had been coming to the store for several years. Some customers have been with the company for more than ten years now.
More than half of the customers visit the shoe section and face difficulties in exploration.
About 60% of the customers were clustered near the shoe section (by observation) and they either chose to explore the shoes themselves or take the help of the teammates present to find the shoes.
Majority of the employees are new and inexperienced
We interviewed 6 teammates across 2 stores and witnessed others roaming around the stores. We also read multiple employee reviews online.
The responses were consistent across our research, with no teammate being with Dick's for more than 8 months. The in-store research also informed us that most are not professionals but learn on the job
Therefore, we decided to focus on the shoe search experience to recommend the perfect shoes for customers.
Service proposition
The Trueshoe service would prioritize individual preferences to co-create the experience. The source data comes from our customers, and they stay connected and informed about the end products of the service.
We want to focus on loyal customers of DSG, who have rich data in browsing and purchasing history with DSG. We propose to use Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning algorithms to study customer interests in shoes, producing a unique customer profile that generates a perfectly personalized shoe recommendation system.
From these insights, we proposed the Trueshoe service to recommend the best-fitting shoe accommodating customer’s interests. The solution would consider all-encompassing needs in choosing a shoe - gait, size, sports, brand, influencers …. you name it! Everyone has different reasons for choosing a pair of shoes, and we would like our customers to experience the best recommendation considering all these interests from employees when they visit DSG.
“The individual is central to the co-creation experience.”
“Companies have to find ways to process what they learn from customers so they can bring the dialogue forward and keep the consumer’s interest.”
Service Blueprint
Zooming in to our service
Core values:
Perfect fit without repetitive and tedious trying process
Professional recommendation based on customer data
Efficient interaction providing the best advice
Value Flow Model:
We want to provide long-term value addition to both DSG customers and DSG.
For DSG customers, they would receive personalized service that constantly analyzes their interests based on customer data. This saves time for customers to search, choose and return when receiving a wrong pair. It also maximizes the quality of in-store interactions with DSG teammates.
For DSG, this service is a great opportunity to strengthen customer loyalty and retention. It differentiates DSG from other competitors, as the whole buying process is made simple, clear, and time-efficient. DSG can also power better marketing and collaboration strategies using data unified with this service.
The Trueshoe service would lead to a long-term significant return of investment.
Reflection
Trueshoe has been a great experience for me to apply my knowledge to a real-world client project. It has been very challenging given the strict timeframe and a large team, where we have to balance everyone’s ideas and schedules, and ensure we are working towards the same goals. However, this project is largely satisfying as we unwrap the problem space to find a solution out of the ambiguities, and received positive feedback from our clients. Here are some lessons I learned from this project.Lesson 1Flexibility and adaptability are important in team projects. This means being willing to change your approach and try new things if something isn't working.
Lesson 2Clear goals and expectations are necessary for a team to succeed. This means defining the project's objectives and establishing roles and responsibilities for each team member.
Lesson 3Time management is crucial in client projects. This means setting realistic deadlines and working efficiently to meet quality points.