8: Shopping 🛍 User Experience - Retail
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-Last month, Colin just made an interesting observation on "Weekend Update." -Walmart has filed a patent for robot bees that could be used to pollinate crops like real bees, which leads me to ask, what is Walmart now? It's a department store that became a grocery store and a firearms dealer, and now they're just building an army of robot bees? I miss the good old days when Walmart was just a place where I saw my third-grade teacher punch a greeter on Black Friday.

Well, welcome to another episode of ID8, our podcast about user experience. This time, what is happening to the UX of shopping? We're going to break down some of the key components to this rapid evolution that we're all a part of. We'll talk to Eilis Liffring from Digiday about new school brick and mortar. Rob's getting some insights from Sean Lane and Tim Devlin from Columbia Sportswear. And Paul's got a tech lesson for us in friction.

But first, Aaron's got a puzzle for us to solve. I'm going to play some audio snippets from my day today for you guys. Everything you're about to hear has one thing in common. Okay? Okay. Take a listen. All right, I'm headed to the store, but first I got to put on my sneakers.

Okay, I'm at the grocery store and getting my cart. Excuse me. What's up? How you doing? Doing good. Good. I am looking for marshmallow fluff. Marshmallow fluff? Yeah. I want to say that's over an hour and a half, but I'm not 100% sure. So we'll just ask George. Oh, all right. We'll ask George. Hey, George. Where's the marshmallow fluff? Oh, I'm standing on the other side. All right. Thank you.

How are you doing? Do you like marshmallow fluff? No? Not a fan? Fluffin' Utter sandwiches. Fluffin' Utter. The peanut butter and the... Alright, so what did all of those things have in common? You were involved in all of them? That is true.

I am a key part of my own day. I'll try again. Everything you're doing was bought at a store or some retail location. That is accurate, but that is not where I was going. You ready for it? All of these things were invented in 1917. What?

That is impossible to guess. Why didn't you guys guess that? You're the worst. Well, everyone's entitled to their opinion, Hiromi. But yes, sneakers, the essential part of a fluff and utter sandwich, marshmallow fluff, and the way we shop at physical stores were all invented in 19...

Now as much as I'd like to talk about that wonder of science that is marshmallow fluff, let's talk about the origins of the modern shopping experience. If you'd like a taste of what shopping was like before 1917, all you'd have to do was play Oregon Trail. You'd go to the trading post, walk up to the clerk, and tell them all the things that you would need on your journey. You'd tell them you'd need a pound of flour,

some shotgun shells, and because marshmallow fluff hadn't been invented yet, you'd have to make it yourself. So you'd order some sugar and cocaine, and then he would get all those items together for you. He would go up and down the aisles gathering your items and then bring them all to you. Then along came a man named Clarence Saunders. He looked at these clerks going up and down these aisles, and he said, "This is just not efficient."

That led him to the idea that would change shopping forever.

And he patented it. And you guys know I love patents. U.S. Patent 1242872, which has some diagrams that you'd recognize if you've ever been to a grocery store, but also some beautiful illustrations. I don't know if you follow Apple rumors, but there'll be these articles where they find this hidden patent that Apple had filed. And it just looks like Apple's run by a bunch of fourth graders. Yeah, very rudimentary. Yeah, they're using Microsoft Paint. Yeah.

Exactly. But Saunders patents, you could frame these things. They're really beautiful. But anyways, I'd like to read to you some of this patent.

The object of my said invention is to provide a store equipment by which the customer will be enabled to serve himself, and in so doing will be required to review the entire assortment of goods carried in stock conveniently and attractively displayed, and after selecting the list of goods desired, will be required to pass a checking and paying station, at which the goods selected may be billed, packed, and settled for before retiring from the store.

Thus relieving the store of a large proportion of the usual incidental expenses or overhead charges. Well thought out there, Clarence. Yeah. Clarence invented the self-service grocery store, or as we call it today, a grocery store. This radical idea became the Piggly Wiggly grocery store chain.

This was unheard of, the idea that you would go up and down aisles and pick out your own groceries. But because it was efficient, cost-effective, increased profits, it became the norm. So did Dollar General have a loophole by unattractively displaying products? That's how they got around the patent. Yep, exactly. This was really driven by a desire for efficiency, right?

and for profit. And of course, lowering costs. And almost all innovation in any industry is driven by those things. You might notice that it wasn't driven by a desire to provide a convenience to the customer. In fact, it was the exact opposite. It gave us more work to do. And continuing that tradition of giving consumers more work to do to lower costs, we get...

the self-checkout machine. What's your guys' experience with self-checkout machines? I always get stuck there and need someone to come help me.

Yeah, I think that's my experience too. I love the concept in theory that I can make the line go faster and get my stuff and maybe not even have to talk to anyone sometimes. It is kind of odd that I end up having to wait for someone to clear something on the screen nine times out of ten anyways. It ends up being kind of a longer process. Yeah.

Yeah, exactly. The manager has to bring a key and then swipe a card and then put in another key and four people have to come with their keys and turn them at the same time. It's a reset machine. It's more complicated than the president's football.

Yes. There is a comedian on Last Comic Standing, and basically a premise of his joke was that by using self-checkout, he basically became an employee of the store. That you got to check yourself out now, but that ain't what I'm trying to do when I go into the grocery store. I came in as a shopper. I want to leave as a shopper. That's...

Yes, that's my goal. But now you're a team member now. You don't even know. Thanks. So true. That was comedian Rod Mann. So why are we drawn to these machines? You have to admit there's some hubris involved. We think, oh, I could do it better than that clerk. And we're, of course, almost always wrong. But mostly what draws us to these machines is what drives much of our shopping behavior. We crave money.

convenience yeah I think all shopping is about convenience right because ultimately we buy things because we don't want to spend the time to make it ourselves at some point in the past there was a guy who was good at making arrowheads but not good at making poles or sticks so he got with a friend who was good at making sticks and they made a spear something like that

Yes. I saw that documentary too. Yeah, straight from the Wikipedia page. Spears. Yeah. But Rob is right. So much emphasis is placed on things like price and quality, and rightly so. But much of what drives commerce is that desire for convenience. So I'd like to introduce you to the convenience threshold formula. Yay!

Is this one of your making? Kind of. I should point out that I am terrible at math and this formula does not make any sense. But here it is. Time invested must be less than the value divided by the price of the items times their cost.

so let me let me explain that so i smell a nobel prize coming on oh it's already in the mail my friend so the time invested say 20 minutes round trip to the store 10 minutes navigating the store to find your items then five minutes to check out so a total of 35 minutes so that has to be less than the rest of this formula so what are you getting let's say it's toilet paper

and you are currently on your last roll of toilet paper at home. So on a scale of 1 to 10, we're probably at a 9. It's an emergency. We need this toilet paper. Been there. Oh, we've all been there.

So $5.99 for this pack of toilet paper, but then multiply that by the intangible cost that comes from going to the store and getting this item. So let's say going to the store is going to make you miss the beginning of The Bachelor. So true. Yeah. So true.

For me, missing the bachelor would be a bonus. So on a scale of 1 to 10, 10 being the worst, it would be a negative 10. But for some people, that would be a sacrifice. So that would have a higher cost. So we take all those numbers and plug them into the formula. Time is less than value divided by the price of items times their intangible cost.

What we're really saying is that the perceived effort of something, the time it's going to take you, has to be less than the value of the item you're getting.

Now this is also affected by bundling. If you need toilet paper, but you also need milk and you also need bread, well then the time it takes to get to the store is less costly because of the value of those multiple items being put together. So what should we do about the convenience threshold formula? We can apply it to business and design in multiple ways.

Number one, diversify or specialize.

Think about stores like Marshalls. Marshalls used to be the store you'd go get overstocked, out of style clothing at a cheap price. Today, you go there and they've got furniture and artesian olive oil. Any number of candle holder device that you could possibly ever need. Right. Ginsu knives. I mean, it's just...

It makes no sense that all those things go together. But lots of people are like, oh, I'm going to go shop for a new coat. But you know what? I also need some olive oil. So I'm going to go to Marshall's. Yeah. But of course, Amazon is the pinnacle of this. You know, with a limited amount of time, you can open up your computer and have access to coats and olive oil and knives and

that threshold is just so easy to surpass, it's hard to compete with that. That's why specialization is so important. Whether it be through a great customer service or

a unique selection, or as Hiromi is going to get into, curation. Being specialized is much more sustainable than having a huge, cheap inventory. Number two, squish the road. Squish the road by reducing the perception of how much time it's going to take to shop at your store.

Make the signage clear. Organize your store in a logical manner. If you'd like another way to reduce the perception of time, listen to our first episode on credit card machines. But what about e-commerce? How do you reduce the perception of time? This is where design really comes in, but also some business decisions. Is it so important that you have a user set up an account? Or could you ask those questions at the end of the process? Is it worth all the abandoned carts that that generates?

and how you design your form. Do you really need a city and a state or can you use a zip code lookup and have the form figure out their city and state automatically? Number three, forget the piggly wiggly.

Thanks to new technology and different kinds of labor, we can go back to the general store using an app, a digital assistant, or even the phone. We could call ahead to a store and have them do all that navigating up and down those aisles for us. My very Minnesotan grocery store offers this.

So there's two spots directly out these doors and they're designated. They're because you call and it goes to customer service. And then a private employee brings the stuff out too. You don't even have to get out of your car, but we're not saying that all stores have to take such extreme steps, but in order to survive today, cost cutting is only going to take you so far. So keep looking for ways to reduce time and effort for your customers. Think about the user experience of shopping.

I'd like to conclude by sharing a conversation I was having with an investor for one of our clients. He owns a large number of convenience stores and he told me that he was worrying about all these new innovations that are coming out, self-driving cars, where people even need to stop at a convenience store. So he asked his dad who started these businesses, should we get out now while we still can? And his dad said, sure, things will change, technology will change, but the need for convenience will never go away.

That's because shopping is a convenience. Don't forget it. Okay, Aaron, that was fantastic. But let me rewind for just a second. I want to go back to that story about Clarence Saunders, but I want to follow it down a different path. The path of the boom in selection.

At the beginning of the 20th century, things were looking pretty rough. There were a lot of things to think about other than brands of cheese or the selection of toilet paper. There were two world wars in pretty quick succession. There was a Great Depression. People had a lot on their minds. And it was in that environment that mom and pop shops were doing okay.

There weren't that many options. There were just the basics. They were in the store. The store didn't need to be that big. And there wasn't that much competition. But there was a lot of pent-up demand that was released right after World War II. So much so that a lot of people refer to that period as the Consumer Golden Age. Any place, any time, is a good time for Coke. See?

We all know that there was a baby boom. Some of our parents are from that era. But that led to a need for more homes, bigger homes. Bigger homes means need for more stuff in the home. Need for stuff means innovation. People were thinking of all kinds of weird stuff to invent. If you look at the 50s, there's entire museums devoted to this stuff. Pipes for two people, vending machines that'll give you a tan.

My favorite was a brush that you clamp to your kid's neck so that as he plays, it keeps his neck clean. At least my neck is clean. How do I get one of those now?

A dress of aluminium with a sash to change it for afternoon or evening and an electric headlight to help her to find an honest man. All kinds of hilarious inventions like that. But it led to stores needing to get bigger. They needed more space for more selection and everyone wanted to offer it. So what if we took all these mom and pop shops and turned them into departments of a larger store?

Hey, we could even call it a department store, right? And it's out of this effort that you start to see your Sears and your Macy's and your JCPenney's and your Kohl's eventually. Looks like somebody's been doing some shopping. And that means somebody's been doing a lot of walking.

and getting more and more worn out because by the time a woman assembles a complete spring wardrobe, she's generally covered a lot of floor space in a lot of stores. Then someone else says, no, no, no, no, no. One department store isn't enough. We need multiple department stores under one roof. So in 1956, the first indoor mall was created in Minneapolis. ♪

Thank you.

This is the way we live now. Nice, even temperature. No rain, no snow, no loud noises. Music is playing. Everything's perfect in the mall. But why should we have to go from store to store in a mall when we could put it all in one huge store? A big box store. Walmart Home Entertainment. You can find anything you want.

Anything for everybody. New CD, Walmart. New music, Walmart. After this, it gets a little nuts. It's not just a Walmart. It's a Walmart super center. It's much larger than the old Walmart. Then Walmart says, no, no, no. I'm just going to charge people an annual fee and give them the keys to my entire warehouse. It's the battle of the bull.

Sam's Club versus Walmart. People now have so much selection, you literally need a forklift to be able to access the products in bulk off of these shelves. For the amount of things that you get for the prices, I think it's a good deal. But eventually, someone figures out that they can build a store with a warehouse that spans the entire globe.

- Enter the internet. - With little time to spare, Melissa relies heavily on online shopping. - When I say we order anything and everything, we do. You're not just limited to going to the mall. I get to go to all the malls across the US. - And no one can compete with a selection of the entire globe. Amazon starts taking market share. And now all these department stores, what can they do to attract more customers? Well, they start a race on price. - Kmart, Target, JCPenney, and Best Buy,

all open for doorbusters this morning. This Kmart store is already open 10 to 50% off a lot of things here inside this store. They are doing whatever they can to get people off of their computers, off of their phones and into the store. But it's not sustainable. It's not even profitable.

It's a quick fix and it kind of devalues the brand because people just start to expect those lower prices. They can't compete with the volume, the selection or the price. Getting shoppers into traditional malls and stores is becoming a hard sell.

Shopping centers turning into ghost towns as consumers shift to online shopping. And that led to last year our seeing over 20 major retailers filing for bankruptcy. Brands that 20, 30 years ago, we thought were totally solid. Radio Shack, Payless Shoes, and probably the saddest for me, Toys R Us. I don't want to grow up. I'm a Toys R Us gay.

You know, Rob and Paul and I, we went to Toys R Us headquarters. I think it was almost exactly a year ago. And we all but begged them to let us help with their digital strategy. And it didn't work out. But having this vision in my mind of being a child and all the hope and fun that Toys R Us as a brand represented to me,

pulling up to their headquarters in New Jersey and seeing the reality of the times. The whole structure looked like a Dharma Initiative building, like this stained concrete and the landscaping was overgrown. And then when we finally made our way into the building, it was just full of empty cubicles and

It really made me sad to think that not only had I grown up and was I no longer a Toys R Us kid, but that there wouldn't be a Toys R Us anymore. Once a Toys R Us kid, always a Toys R Us kid. Let's just stop the episode here. This seems like a good spot.

Right at the sad point. Well, you know, this is what happens when the grammar police finally catch up to you. What's the grammar problem, Aaron? I don't know. Police are us. Come on. Yeah, that's right. And it was a backwards R, wasn't it? Yeah. And maybe because Payless wasn't hyphenated. Yeah.

You guys are unpacking the mysteries of the universe here. You guys, they would still be around if it was We Are Toys. It's not all doom and gloom, though. There is a little ray of hope on this industry.

We read an article in Digiday. It was called Why E-commerce Brands Are Flipping the Script and Opening Brick-and-Mortar Stores. So Rob and I called up Eilise Liffring. Hi, I'm Eilise Liffring. I'm a brands reporter at Digiday, and I cover the intersection of digital marketing and brands and their digital strategies. We asked her why she decided to write on this topic. Pretty much, I just noticed I was getting some pictures from some individuals

digital brands saying, come join us at our new store that's popping up this week. And I was like, well, this is kind of weird, right? That, you know, that all these pretty popular retailers like Allbirds, Away, ModCloth, Glossier were opening new stores when, you know, at the same time, Macy's, St. Penny's, other

All these department stores are struggling so much. They're fighting tooth and nail to get into the e-commerce space that these brands are already doing well in. And here, brands like Amazon purchase Whole Foods. They're opening Amazon Go. Amazon.

Amazon has sort of toyed around with brick and mortar, but this is a major acquisition of over 460 stores, I think. I know they kind of kick around, they build this, they put robots there, they do this, and then suddenly, okay, we're going to buy Whole Foods today at $12 billion. Warby Parker, Zappos, Bonobos all started as successful e-com businesses and then decide to go into brick and mortar? Why?

Well her research showed that brick and mortar retail is far from dead. Regardless of how convenient online shopping is, people still like to try on products and see and actually feel products before purchasing them. Even though we see a decline, it still represents 85 to 90% of all retail. So what are these new school brands doing differently?

She said, "Well, they're reacting to a change in our overall culture.

You know, there was a time, of course, when people had more time than they had money. Today, people are stretched to their limit. They're overwhelmed. They're stressed out. They don't have a lot of time, even though there are certainly plenty of people struggling financially. On average, young people have historically high discretionary funds. And with that circumstance in mind, you have to ask yourself, do

Do these people want their shopping experience to be like the distribution line at a FEMA disaster relief site?

Right. They aren't delivering the type of retail that consumers want these days. And these new school brands are listening to that. A lot of these stores are designed to be warm and inviting and spacious and not overwhelming. Yeah. See, these stores are flipping this script because they're actually offering less selection in store. In fact, some of them don't even carry any stock.

in the building. You don't go there to get stuff. You go there to experience their product and inform your decision.

So we asked Elyse to tell us about one of these experiences that she thought was well done. What she said reminded me of one of my favorite TED Talks. It's by a psychologist named Barry Schwartz, where he talks about the paradox of choice.

Does that ring a bell for you guys? No. Maybe. You'd probably recognize it if you heard it. It's an older TED talk. He explains that in the West, we're trained to believe from infancy that freedom is the answer to all of our problems. The way to maximize freedom is to maximize choice. The more choice people have, the more freedom they have,

And the more freedom they have, the more welfare they have. This, I think, is so deeply embedded in the water supply that it wouldn't occur to anyone to question it. And that's led to the situation he describes, where he goes to the grocery store and there's an entire aisle of salad dressings, over 175 varieties of salad dressings. Who needs that many salad dressings, right? And he outlines how it's the same for jeans, for cell phones.

Even in healthcare, he says, your doctor gives you choices. And the result is, we call it patient autonomy, which makes it sound like a good thing, but what it really is, is a shifting of the burden and the responsibility for decision making from somebody who knows something, namely the doctor, to somebody who knows nothing and is almost certainly sick and thus not in the best shape to be making decisions, namely the patient.

There's enormous marketing of prescription drugs to people like you and me, which if you think about it makes no sense at all since we can't buy them.

Why do they market to us if we can't buy them? The answer is that they expect us to call our doctors the next morning and ask for our prescriptions to be changed. I saw one the other day that said, if you're on this medication, avoid grapefruit or grapefruit juice. Why? Yeah, of course. You're going to want to stay away from grapefruit. I am 100% real. This is the world that we live in. Yeah, exactly. That's what Barry's saying.

The true result of all these limitless options is twofold. It causes paralysis and it causes dissatisfaction. He says it causes paralysis because people are afraid to make the wrong decisions. I mean, how many times have you started searching the web ready to make a purchase, but you

But hours later, you just decided to put off the decision. Yeah, for sure. Every day. Right? So more selection is causing us to make less decisions.

Second of all, all these decisions are raising our expectations. Adding options to people's lives can't help but increase the expectations people have about how good those options will be. And what that's going to produce is less satisfaction with results, even when they're good results. When decisions are made for us, we have the opportunity to be pleasantly surprised. But when we have to become an expert in every industry we shop in,

The best we can possibly hope for is to get something that's almost as good as we expected. I believe a significant contributor to this explosion of depression and also suicide is that people have experiences that are disappointing because their standards are so high. And then when they have to explain these experiences to themselves, they think they're at fault.

And so the net result is that we do better in general, objectively, and we feel worse. I think it's really interesting that Barry Schwartz links the desire to choose everything for yourself to anxiety and depression. Wow, that is really interesting because...

When we have to become an expert before we can make a decision to buy something, what you're really talking about is the removal of convenience. Exactly. Exactly. There is something to that for sure. I mean, I've heard too that, you know, less choice makes us happier. Like, I mean, I know when I go out to eat, I'm like forever looking at the menu and can't make up my mind. I'm like one of those people. Yeah.

- When you go out to eat, what are you looking for? - If I'm going to a non-American style restaurant,

and maybe a mom and pop shop, I'll usually ask them what they eat or what they make for their families. Yeah, there are different types of restaurants, right? And there's room for a place like, say, Golden Corral. You heard that right. For just $11.99, it's over 150 choices on our legendary dinner buffet, including 20 entrees, 20 vegetables, and 20 desserts. For the most choices anywhere at dinnertime, it's only Golden Corral.

So to each his own, right?

But at a higher price point, your expectations do evolve a little bit. I've frequented a couple of Japanese restaurants for the past 15 years. This is my friend Jason. And they're on the higher end. But I just kind of was... I got bored of the regular menu. It actually kind of felt bad for the chefs. They're always making California rolls. They're always making this special roll. And you see their selection of fish is amazing.

If you go to a sushi bar, you can certainly choose for yourself, but

If the sushi bar is worth its salt, you'll be able to tell the chef, "Omakase." "Omakase" literally means, "I give up the right to choose." So, hey, you're the pro. You've been doing this all your life.

And you know what the freshest catch is today. You know what unique flavor combinations go with that freshest catch. And you're going to make me something that I had never even dreamed of. So now I kind of practice this in my local Japanese restaurant, sushi restaurant I go to. I just go in there. The guy is super Japanese. Like I tell him the word and he like bows at me super hard. And he just comes up with something. It's excitement on both ends because you don't know what you're going to get.

And it's usually a good product, so. See, the beauty of omakase is that it leaves the possibility open that you could be pleasantly surprised.

It's something that's really missing in our retail landscape. And people are starting to realize this. There's an evolution taking place, really a polarization. These wholesalers are doing pretty well. There's still room for a low price, lots of options model, but anything below a Costco is feeling a lot of pressure to focus less on distribution of commodities and

and to take on a kind of a consulting service. They need to get people to trust them, trust their guidance, to look to them to curate their need for certain products. Because we as consumers, we can't be an expert on everything. Many of us would even be willing to pay a premium to be pleasantly surprised. ♪

Hiromi, I hate to correct you, but it's "Omakase" Yeah I hate to be that guy, but... Yeah, fair enough, fair enough Okay, so Rob, your turn. We've got these two commercial methodologies Which one is the way of the future? I'd like to shift our focus away from commerce

And on to that of symbiotic relationships.

There are different types of symbiotic relationships, but the one here I think fits best is one known as mutualism. Mutualism is a type of symbiosis where both parties involved benefit from it. I'm sure you're familiar with this. Oh, who is this? Remember Finding Nemo? Well, Nemo, all new explorers must answer a science question. Okay. You live in what kind of home? In an animal.

The anemone and the clownfish actually benefit from this type of relationship. That one of mutualism. The clownfish protects the anemone from the butterflyfish, and the anemone protects the clownfish from its own predators. As I've been researching both e-commerce and brick-and-mortar stores, it's become clear that they actually can benefit each other.

e-commerce, although being new, does not solve all the problems that brick and mortar stores think that they have. In fact, e-commerce has some pretty serious issues. Can you think of any issues that e-commerce suffers from? Trust. Trust in what way?

Um, well, of course you, over time we trust Amazon. We trust, you know, maybe certain brands that we understand. Like, am I ever going to see this stuff? When is it going to show up? Like, is the product reputable? Like, are they just trust? Yeah. Okay. All right. All right. I'll take that. Trust. What about like inventory management for stuff?

For sure. Yeah. Or just people even, even knowing about like knowing about. Yeah. Yeah. Visibility. Visibility. Yeah. Yeah. Shipping and returns.

That's a $260 billion a year problem here in the United States alone.

So we investigated a little bit. We had the opportunity to call Sean Lane and Tim Devlin, who work over at Columbia Sportswear, and we asked them, how big of a problem is this? It's a big industry problem. I've talked to a lot of brands, and I think it's one of the primary areas that they're all struggling with is e-com and selling directly to a consumer and then having a seamless or frictionless service

I think this is where things get interesting because there's this problem where people are ordering things online, getting them in the mail, not getting what they thought they ordered or getting the wrong size or not getting a size that fits them properly and returning them.

And as Sean mentioned, various companies are making it so easy to return things that knowing that it'll be so easy to ship things back, they order multiple sizes of a product, get those in the mail, determine what fits, and send back the ones that don't. That's what we do now. We don't go crazy, but if you know there's a good chance that medium is going to be too big or small is going to be too small, then...

Just get both of them and see which one fits so you don't have to wait two weeks to get the thing you actually wanted. Ah, so we have a self-perpetuating problem here. Because it's so easy to return stuff, people do it more. So what can be done to alleviate this problem? Well, this is where what Sean and Tim do at Columbia for Designers is

is really interesting. The initial problem we were trying to solve was to reduce the number of physical prototypes that we create during the season by basically creating a virtual example of that product. Once we have that virtual prototype, it enables us to have better conversations earlier in the process with our design teams and our merchandising teams to make sure that we're meeting design intent, we're building in quality up front, it gives us more time once the physical prototype comes in to actually

make the right changes to that product and ensure that we're

providing the highest quality product to the marketplace. What designers want is the ability to rapid prototype. With physical things, it's a slow process because you have to actually make those things. But what Sean and Tim are doing at Columbia is providing virtual objects that can be created instantly and it allows for even quicker prototyping. And through the use of these 3D software programs, we've been able to virtually create that garment

and render that onto an avatar to see the same comparison. So we started doing these fit review sessions where we actually had the live fit model and the real garment compared to a simulated model as an avatar and in a virtual garment and trying to build trust and create a pipeline for approval of this garment's development.

faster by using the virtual product. They use the word trust a lot. They're trying to instill trust in the designers that the digital versions of these things will actually be like the physical thing. Doesn't that sound familiar? We have the same problem as consumers when we buy things online. What we really need to do is be able to trust that the thing that we're buying will be the thing that we get.

If some newfangled technology though can produce better prototypes which can ultimately end in better products for us as consumers,

How then does a symbiotic relationship between e-commerce and brick-and-mortar stores make any sense? Just like those designers have to ultimately make physical version of the digital thing they were working on because they have to feel it, they have to see it, they have to put it on a model. That's exactly what we should do as consumers before we buy something. We have to try it on. We have to see what it looks like, what it feels like.

Some things just have to be experienced in person. If I'm a consumer and I purchase online and I haven't touched the product and I can't see or feel it, then that has an impact on my perception when I receive it.

and that could be good or bad. I might buy a jacket, for example, that it looks great online. I get it and it's loud when I walk. It makes a lot of noise and I don't like that because I'm out in the forest and I'm trying to enjoy nature, not the sound of my jacket. Those are subtle things that I think make it challenging for online versus and how you communicate that to your consumer, I think is important. The closer you get to your consumer, the less challenge you have, I think, with that translation. You can't get much closer

than a physical store. And this is why I suggest a symbiotic relationship between physical stores and e-commerce. The future is both, each doing what they're good at. Brick and mortar stores provide that in-person experience where you can feel a product, you can see what it looks like, you can put it on.

online provides you with all the choice you could possibly imagine. In the future, we'll go to stores, figure out what fit we need, what size we need. But in the end, we'll probably buy everything online. That leaves it up to each brand to have an experience in their stores. If e-commerce and brick and mortar stores work together,

They can have a symbiotic relationship where both benefit, where both provide something to the other and both get something from one another. And when they work together to provide a better experience, they're not only providing value to one another, but they're providing value to me and to you. Those are some excellent points, Rob. I couldn't agree more. So with that in mind, what can brick and mortar retail do to make the experience better?

Paul was going to talk about a common enemy to good UX. What you got, Paul? When you hear someone say, I work in retail, they're probably talking about those polo shirt clad sales folk stocking shelves, or maybe they're buying products to stock on the shelves. Maybe they're management, security. Every once in a while, you might talk to someone who's in charge of store layout, like displays, putting together cardboard cutouts of the Avengers and things like that.

Still rarer, but not unheard of. Hidden away in the corporate headquarters of the largest retailers, rubbing shoulders with executives and accountants. There's someone whose job it is to reduce friction.

What is friction? Well, when I think of friction, I think of this episode of Bill Nye the Science Guy I watched as a child growing up in the 90s. See, friction is everywhere. Friction is what slows your comb down as you pull it through your hair. Friction is what keeps your bicycle from sliding out from under you as you go around a corner. And friction is what keeps your shoelaces tied. Well, that's all fine and good for the physical world.

But it's not so good for retail stores. FriXion keeps us from sliding all over the place like so many loose bowling balls in your uncle's trunk. It slows us down and literally keeps us grounded. But if you're in retail, you don't want FriXion.

Retail frictions the stuff that spawns your worst shopping nightmares. And of course, those little annoyances, your finest pet peeves, that make you question whether or not you're leaving the house for socks or underwear, or braving the great outdoors en route to Target. Does that sound like something you guys might be able to relate to? Yes.

I think not being able to find what you want is a point of friction, right? Just the air traveling through your hair as you're walking aimlessly through a store that may or may not have that item you're looking for. When I think of the friction of shopping, I think of people trying to help me but don't know anything. Right.

I also throw out there not being able to find someone to help you. Oh, yeah. Oh, that's the worst. Yeah, for sure.

Even as customers, we don't want any kind of friction in our experience. Just like physical friction creates heat, it's this negative energy that's evidence of a physical object being pulled apart molecule by molecule. It's not unlike what happens to our brains when we simply want to make a quick stop on our way home from work to grab a six-pack of beer. Easy, right?

So I'll just get off at this exit because I got off here. If I get off here, I can drive past this convenience store that's so conveniently on the right hand side of the road so that I don't have to wait for the left arrow at the busiest intersection in town at 5:30 p.m. on a Friday to get into the parking lot of the grocery store just to circle for 10 minutes to find a parking spot because everyone else in this town had the same idea.

So great, that'll take five minutes and I'll have plenty of time still to help clean up the house in time for my in-laws to arrive for dinner. But what's this? The guy in front of me in line's checking out, he's buying lottery tickets one at a time, scratching off each box just infuriatingly slow, losing, and then it's rinse and repeat over and over again. Meanwhile, I'm still waiting and time's a-tickin'.

That was very specific. Yes, that is a very specific example. But you see, if you're a customer and you run into something like that, you're going to think twice before going to that store again. It's a bad experience. It's just one more thing keeping your money out of the coffers of at least one Jiffy Mart. Now, can you clarify for me, were you the person doing the lottery tickets or are you the guy getting beer?

Yes, Aaron. I was the guy buying beer. Okay, thank you. That friction is emotional negative space. It slows down your life and you as the customer don't want to risk experiencing that ever again. It's a big letdown. When the promise of convenience brings you an experience that is inconvenient, that's bad for business.

I'd also be remiss not to mention some of the socially awkward things that happen when you're shopping. Like Aaron said, employees that just don't know anything, they're not trained or aren't experienced enough. This poor kid that just started this morning and his manager went on break. It's not his fault, but it's not yours either. Who's going to check the back room for this or that or whatever you came in the store for? Another perhaps more obscure situation can happen like...

Like that I like to call the unrequited interaction. When you really need some help and there's no one in sight. Maybe the manager and the new employee went on a break together. Perhaps they're fighting the forces of evil like in the classic TV adventure drama. Chuck. Sarah, Chuck, I had an idea. Delta Force. Have you called them yet? If not, call me back with their number. Or there's the unwanted interaction. I'm doing everything I can to avoid eye contact with the sales guy.

I don't want to tell you what I'm there for, I don't want to talk to anyone, I'm tired, I want to get in and get out, but it's just forced on you like unannounced guests at a family and friends only wedding. No thanks. Who wouldn't want to stay at home and shop on Amazon? So why don't retail stores just give up? Well, like every institution who's got a long and glorious tradition, they won't give up without a fight.

or at least a lot of research. Enter the forgotten shop floor, a study conducted by Fujitsu across many European retail locations over many months, culminating in a presentation revealed near the close of 2017. There's a 30-ish minute video of the presentation on YouTube if you're so inclined, but I'll give you the CliffsNotes. Customers want a physical store to be as much like the physical location and the digital location as possible. They want unity of purpose.

No one likes it when you go to the physical location for an item not in stock and be told to order it on the website. People want the ability to search store inventory from home before going to the store, as many retailers already provide. The convenience of online shopping is directly proportional to the customer's willingness to wait. Sure, you don't have to leave the house if you order something online, but you do have to wait a couple of days, and probably you have to worry about the order by this time for a day or two delivery window.

If you're out of toilet paper right now, you need it right now, or at least pretty soon, and that's the bottom line. Bottom. It's the bottom line. So, the ultimate convenience is to know your purpose for being in a store will be fulfilled quickly and easily, or at least within an acceptable margin of failure.

So this same study discussed a situation retailers find themselves in often when using technology to solve problems. But then that very technology creates all sorts of new problems. Here's the kicker.

A whopping 40% of customers found in-store technology to be, and I'm paraphrasing here a little bit, the worst ever. These kiosks, these self-checkout machines, customer education devices, photo printing terminals, they're unreliable. They're immobile. They don't look the part. They don't look like they fit or that they were well-designed or well-thought-out.

Many times staff members aren't trained to use them well. There's not enough of them to go around for everybody. Can you feel things heating up? Are you a little mad yet? Are you logging into Amazon right now? Even two-thirds of the employees surveyed said that what they were provided was, and I'm paraphrasing here as well, maybe not the worst ever, but still pretty bad. Which meant it was slow, they couldn't carry it around with them. Or just plain old ain't working. Don't believe me?

Well, I invited a friend of mine to join us for a few minutes just to find out what his perspective is. So just give me a second and I'm going to dial him in. And yeah, I'll be right back. Hey, hi. Can you guys hear me? Yeah. Hello. Yeah. Yeah.

Hi, this is Paul from 2009, and my friend Paul from 2018 asked me to call into his podcast so that I can talk about what it's like to work at Best Buy on the Geek Squad. Welcome, Paul.

Hey, Paul. Hey, how are you? Yeah, I'm good. Thanks. So we just want to kind of get your impressions about what it's like to work in like a technology enabled environment. You know what I mean? Yeah, thanks for asking. It's not great. Mostly what we have is a little bit slow, kind of ugly to look at. And it's a big store and I can't take this giant computer that's

bolted into the countertop with me. Sometimes I can't find people's, like, receipts, so I can't process their returns. There's just some problems that kind of lead to long lines of people who are just getting madder and madder as they queue up behind me, you know? And I just... But the one thing that gets me through the day is that...

by a year so distant into the future like 2018 things have probably gotten a lot better right wow um don't know quite how to break this to you no things really haven't gotten that much better

Wow, that's really depressing. Actually, you know what? I think I better go. I need to process this. I need to just get away from it all for a little bit. I'm going to go watch a movie that was released in 2009, probably. Well, I don't blame you. So, okay, thanks for joining us. But wait, Paul from 2009. Buy Apple stock. Don't ask me why. Bitcoin! Bitcoin!

You're the best, 2009 Paul. Get back behind that desk and fix my computer. Yeah, I hated to reveal to him that the promise of technology to that young man so long ago, like in a dystopian future, has failed to deliver the goods. But after almost a decade of computers finding their way into stores as tools to sell product, isn't it

Crazy that some of these same problems still exist. It's an indication that it's a hard problem to solve. It might seem unsolvable. Well, what can be done? Who will save us? Well, here's a few principles for retailers to focus on. First one is enable your employees. You might have to perform some limited social engineering and what I mean by that is you teach them how to read body language.

You may have to teach them some compassion for people coming into the store.

But you have to balance that with the understanding that you can't control people. No one can do that. In an effort to generate compassion, to generate a good relationship with people. Don't train employees to treat everyone the same way or lump customers into easy to remember categories, each of which behaves a different way and you have to interact with them a different way. You need to teach soft skills and get hard cash. Ha ha.

The second principle is build optimized technology over any technology at all.

So are your in-store systems tough to upgrade? Well then let your employees bring their own devices. Give them an app that helps them to service customers on a device that works, that they're familiar with already, that's easy to maintain because you don't have to. Or invest in your infrastructure. Design systems to support your needs. That's up to your unique challenge. Don't settle for one-size-fits-all solutions that are pitched by pie-in-the-sky idealists. Why? Well, let's sum it up.

The Fujitsu study boils down to this: technology can help. Customers want technology. In fact, customers said that they would be more likely to give their money to stores that had a positive technology experience. Low friction means smooth sailing and repeat business. Technology can help, but bad technology is going to make it worse.

Okay, guys, great segments. Let's do a quick lightning round. What were your takeaways on the UX of shopping? Well, for me, I'm going to put my takeaway into action. Reduce time. Do you see what I did there? I made my takeaway very short.

So as to reduce time. Brilliant. I think that lightning round takeaway was faster than an actual bolt of light. I think for my takeaway, I'm seeing a lot of like just meaningless screens in stores these days. High tech, low concept junk.

And to me, this is a sign of misinterpretation or misunderstanding on the part of retailers. It's like they think people are shopping on their phones because they love screens. You know, it reminds me of that scene in The Jerk where Steve Martin's character is getting shot at and because the shooter is missing him and hitting these cans he's standing next to, he assumes that the guy hates cans. He hates these cans!

And we have to stop building tech for tech's sake. People are being drawn by convenience, by selection, and price. We talked about that, right? So retailers have to stop competing in the same arena. It's like Tiger Woods running a foot race against Usain Bolt just because they're both in sports.

No, you have your own strengths, Tiger Woods. You be you, Tiger Woods. That's all I have to say. Yeah, I think that's similar to my takeaway in that I think in our culture, we're primed to constantly think about how one thing is better than the other. You know, the e-commerce is the future and the brick and mortar has to go away. And it's not about being better. It's just about being different.

And I think retail stores have certain strengths that e-commerce will never have. And e-commerce has certain strengths that physical stores will never have. I think if they can live harmoniously together, they can play a beautiful chord. Don't be something you're not. Yeah, exactly. I like it. What about you, Paul?

Yeah, all you guys really touched on it a little bit, except for Aaron. I'm not totally sure what he touched on. It wasn't much. My one takeaway is that people in many industries look at the problems that they have, and the retail industry is no different, and they want to solve it with technology.

But the mistake that they make is that they have to get the technology into the store as quickly as possible with little to no forethought really to make sure that that piece of technology is really solving their problem instead of creating new ones. Because really your biggest asset in a retail store is going to be your employees. Just treat me like a human being. That would be the first step to empowering your employees. In addition to that, giving them the technology that works or don't give them any technology at all.

Because that's something that technology can't do yet. TWA RGP, guys. That was a really great podcast. So last month we partnered with Alana Fishman from Wisecam to offer a giveaway to five of our listeners. So we'd like to congratulate... Drumroll, please.

Congratulations, your Wyzecams are in the mail. Please let us know what you think of them. And thanks to everyone who entered. There definitely will be more opportunities to come.

Okay, so I think that's about it for us. We'd really like to thank our guests, Elise Liffring from Digiday, Sean Lane and Tim Devlin from Columbia Sportswear, Paul from 2009. I'd like to thank the podcast Every Little Thing for providing some inspiration for the segment on credit card terminals. I encourage you to check that out. You can learn a lot more about self-checkout and the Piggly Wiggly.

Next up is education. If you have something to say about the UX of EDU, will you tell us about it? Tweet us at ideate team or leave us a message on our idea line. 612-208-6686. We look forward to hearing from you. And as always, thanks for ideating.