Opportunity Statement

The recommerce market is having substantial year over year growth in the retail environment. With millennials representing a market segment that has low levels of expendable income and a high propensity towards sustainability practices, there is an opportunity for existing recommerce brands to capture some of this emerging market. We feel that Goodwill is an existing customer facing service that could benefit significantly by altering their internal practices and brand perception with the millennial target segment in order to increase revenue.

Goodwill Inc.

Goodwill works to enhance the dignity and quality of life of individuals and families by strengthening communities, eliminating barriers to opportunity, and helping people in need reach their full potential through learning and the power of work.

Based on our research we suggest that Goodwill invests in reconfiguring a select store as a pilot testing ground. By updating the layout of the store to better serve the expectations of their customers (more organized, easy to navigate, special items displayed prominently by the front door, greater sense of cleanliness) Goodwill should see positive growth and increased frequency of return customers within the millennial segment. 

Currently Goodwill accepts donations without requiring them to be washed and after sorting by type, immediately put them out on their floor for consumer purchasing. This practice has created a perception by millennials of an unfavorable experience through disorganization of navigating the store and a lack of trust in the quality and cleanliness of their offering.

Purpose

Mood boards are collages of existing or specially created text, sketches, visualizations, photos, videos, or any other media to communicate an intended design direction. Often used for but certainly not limited to look-and-feel prototyping, mood boards are a way to communicate target experiences, style, or contexts by leveraging analogies of already known concepts. We designed groups of mood boards per each category; Cleanliness, Navigation, Employee interaction, and Organization. With a tool called ‘Proven by Users,’ we made participants card-sort in order of their preference digitally so that our team can have easy and fast visual literacy regarding result analysis.

Expected Outcome

Research data (specifically bugs, insights, and new ideas), photos, collages

Purpose

• Expand Goodwill’s brand awareness outside of the store and reach out to users with contextually curated items.

• Install a vending machine as a new way of communicating to the place where millennials are likely to gather.

• Increase revenue by offering unique items at a slightly higher price point.

• Potential to hire more Goodwill employees (Fulfilling mission)

Expected Outcome

• Users were engaged with a new channel of communication from Goodwill, but indirect interaction could prevent users from purchasing items.

Research Insights

• Users prefer to buy useful items for a specific scenario from the vending machine (“something I need in a rush”), not clothing that I can’t try on.

• Users want to be able to touch the items in the inventory, how can I know its quality?

• Location of the vending machine is important, would go to other stores instead of they were close enough.

Purpose

• Test and iterate upon the stores layout and organization of the clothing racks.

• Gain insights into how customers respond to different signage indicating the quality and cleanliness of the clothing items on each rack.

• Test variations on how curated content can be displayed to customers.

• Allow potential customers to draw a preferred layout of the store in order to see if there is a trend in user expectation.

Expected Outcome

• Develop a sense of how customers navigate and the store layout and the order in which they pay attention to signage and tags.

Research Insights

• Participants didn’t notice the curated section, no signage to direct me towards it.

• Symbols on mock store are hard to read and unclear in what they mean.

• Clothing needs to be organized by gender and type.

• Users want to know who will be curating the items on display.

• Way-finding signage should be more obvious, participants failed to notice labels.

Iteration on Store Model

• Curation wall

• Item tags on racks

• Display for Curator

• Added more clothes

• Different layout of racks

Participants in our research were asked to design their own interpretation of an effective layout for a Goodwill store given the criteria that the store needs: Cashier counter, washed clothing rack, hand selected item rack, general items, and the entrance. 4 out of the 5 participants placed the hand selected items and the washed items & curated items closest to the entrance, as the first thing customers would see entering the store.

Prototype Insights

• Customers don’t care as much about having their clothes washed as they expressed earlier in our one on one interviews, they will wash them anyways.

• They prefer the hand-picked items (higher quality, unique, new) up front towards the entrance.

• A curated section doesn’t interest them that much because how will someone know their own individual style and taste.

• Clothing wall looked more like a mood-board and suggestions of things to find in store.

• Since the store model was a scaled down version, the results were not very accurate.

Synthesis

When running multiple customers through our prototypes, organizations remained a theme where they wanted to see an improvement to enhance their experience, however, cleanliness of clothes no longer felt like a priority as they expressed they would be washing them when they got home regardless. Interviewees felt that to enhance the value perception of their experience with Goodwill the store needed to feature more dynamic content presentation. A display closer to the entrance of the store featuring newer or unique items was expressed as highly desirable.

Established Indicators through proposed value frame