Overview
As part of my master-level UI/UX industry consulting project, my team and I worked with the corporate innovation lab of Starbucks to develop a solution to a problem they noticed in their stores. Starting with user research and persona creation, we discovered a problem in the inventory management system used at all 28,000 Starbucks locations. We then iterated, designed, and prototyped a solution to the challenge. The final output was a video showcasing our data, personas, solutions, and business case that we presented to the Starbucks team and other UX industry professionals.
Tools Used
- Adobe Indesign
- Adobe XD
- Adobe Photoshop
- Google Survey
- Sublime Text 3
What I Did
- User Interviews
- Persona Creation
- CJM Creation
- Brainstorming
- Client Presentation & Feedback
- Wireframing
- Prototyping
- Video Production
The Problem
The group started by observing a partner crew at a local Starbucks operating on a typical day a. This on-the-ground research allowed us to interview the Starbucks partners and see the problems firsthand. With the data collected, we determined that the problem we wanted to solve was the lack of communication between the inventory management system and the front-of-house point of sale. We found that the inventory systems for in-stock items are not connected to the point of sale systems used in the front of the house. This led to the employees frequently selling items that were out of stock and doing visual inventory inspections to determine what items were on hand, costing customer loyalty, time, and money.
Customer Journey Map
After the research gathering phase, we developed a persona for our solution and a customer journey map. Creating this persona helped us better understand how the solution would impact the partners of the Starbucks store. The custom journey map aimed to visually represent the customer’s journey with the product. We used the persona of Jaime to describe what a Starbucks partner goes through on an average day and their expectations of each task and outcome. The Customer Journey Map was a helpful reference for the rest of the project and gave us a tool to double-check that our solution was solving the correct problems and ensuring that we implemented it in a way that didn’t negatively affect other systems.
Solution
With the proposed POS interface, items will show a unique color whether they are in stock and ready to serve, running low on things that are ready to serve, in stock but still frozen, or entirely out of stock. The manager could also mark items as out of stock in the system, making the current process of the 86 board obsolete.