Making convenience genuinely useful

I helped BWS explore and define a new mobile app designed to make shopping more convenient, local and personalised, complementing its existing ecommerce experience.

Year

2018

Client

BWS

Role

Lead experience designer

Contribution

Experience design • UX strategy • Information architecture • Product design

Defining the role of mobile

The challenge was to define a useful role for the app rather than simply recreate the existing website on a smaller screen.

Research across stores, customer interviews, survey feedback and stakeholder sessions helped us understand how customers browsed, purchased, collected and received orders. From this, convenience emerged as the central opportunity, particularly around fulfilment, order tracking, loyalty and more timely communication.

Identifying the customer needs where mobile could add the most value

Audience profiles helped us understand different shopping behaviours, needs and contexts

Designing around the moments that mattered

We mapped the current and future customer journey and developed a set of design principles to guide the experience.

The work shifted from defining an app to identifying where mobile could make shopping meaningfully easier.

We developed an experience centred around fast, flexible fulfilment, allowing customers to order for ASAP delivery, track an order in real time or collect from a nearby store. Woolworths Rewards was integrated into the experience, while favourites, offers and alerts created opportunities for more personalised engagement.

These ideas were explored collaboratively through sketching, wireframing and iterative design, with the research helping us prioritise the features that would provide the most value to customers.

A shared set of design principles helped guide product decisions across the app

Collaborative sketching helped the team explore and prioritise features

Wireframing the core experience across discovery, purchase, fulfilment and loyalty

Testing the proposition

Before development, we tested the prototype with potential customers to understand whether the overall proposition and key interactions resonated.

The core experience tested strongly, particularly the delivery mechanics and interface. Testing also highlighted areas for refinement, including sign-in, where many participants preferred to continue as guests rather than being required to use an account.

Putting the proposition in front of customers

A more useful role for mobile

The resulting experience positioned the app around what mobile could do particularly well – making nearby fulfilment easier, giving customers greater visibility over orders, connecting loyalty and creating a more personalised relationship with BWS.

It brought ordering, delivery, pickup and rewards together into a streamlined experience built around convenience.

Rather than recreating the website, we defined a role for mobile around the moments where it could genuinely improve the customer experience.