Overview
Clients: Hammerson plc (owner of Croydon Centrale Shopping Centre) & The Future Collective (creative agency)
A pop-up store design proposal for the Croydon Centrale Shopping Centre in Croydon, South London that focused on experimenting with creative retail formats and technologies.
The proposal consisted of 3D store design, mobile application design, and proposed marketing activities. In particular, this page centres around presenting the key strategic decisions and rationale as well as the design process behind the mobile application, which was designed to optimise consumers’ in-store customer journeys.
My Role: Co-Project Manager, Sole UX Designer and Visual Design Lead
Created project plan, maintained collaborative workspace on Miro, led team meetings
Led the development of Persona and Customer Journey Map
Designed a mobile application that complemented the 3D store designs
Created mood boards, concept boards, and marketing design mockups
Tools: Miro, Figma, Sketch Up
Client Needs
To revive the retail landscape at Centrale Shopping Centre, making it a retail destination by offering novel retail experiences that encourage consumers to stay for extended periods of time
To win the trust of local communities in Croydon by ensuring that brands and retailers in the area are offering location-specific experiences that are catered to local needs
Who is our target consumer? And which retailer can offer novel experiences and cater to the needs of this consumer group?
01 Selecting and understanding our target consumer group
Field Observations at Centrale Shopping Centre in Croydon
Contextual Consumer Interviews in and around Croydon Centrale Shopping Centre
Retailer Interviews with H&M, House of Fraser, and Superdrug
We conducted two field visits to Centrale Shopping Centre, once on Saturday and once on Wednesday, to get a holistic sense of consumer traffic and shopping behaviours on weekdays versus on weekend. We noticed that, regardless of the day, Croydon Centrale’s shoppers consisted primarily of families, especially families with young children. This observation was corroborated by our conversations with retailers that revealed that children’s wear was often the best-selling category.
02 Selecting an appropriate retailer
Aligning with consumer needs
Filling a commercial opportunity
Based on our persona, three core consumers needs were taken into consideration when selecting a retailer:
Through a retailer audit on existing stores in and around Centrale, we discovered a lack of skincare stores in general amongst an abundance of high street fashion and drugstore beauty brands.
Superdrug was the only retailer in Centrale for affordable beauty and skincare products, and it had great customer traffic as a result. However, through observation and conversation with a Superdrug employee, we discovered a lack of skincare products with natural ingredients.
Great Value
Sustainable
Family-Friendly
Upon filtering out:
Big-name affordable skincare brands such as Lush and The Body Shop that already had stores nearby, lacked novelty in the eyes of the consumers, and lacked the sustainability aspect
Niche, natural skincare brands such as Odylique and Bloomtown that were too unknown and unfamiliar to the local consumers
We arrived at our final retailer choice: Faith in Nature – Trusted UK-based, accessible and natural beauty & skincare brand
By directly speaking with consumers in and around the mall, we gathered their demographic data and probed at their shopping intentions and behaviours.
Based on these direct insights as well as secondary demographic data of Croydon residents, we created our persona below.
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We made sure to leverage the following characteristics of Faith in Nature in our design proposal:
Playful brand visuals and personality
Focus on sustainability (Refill, Reuse, Recycle)
Focus on natural, organic ingredients
What are the broader retail trends? And which ones are the most relevant to our target consumers and chosen retailer?
How can our store design address our consumers’ most prominent needs and desires in a way that aligns with what Faith in Nature has to offer?
50+
Articles & Reports (e.g. BoF, LS:N Global, Raconteur)
Diverse
Visual Research (e.g. WGSN, Behance, Shop Drop Daily)
Upon consolidating broader trends across retail design, retail technologies, customer engagement strategies, pop-up activation, sustainability and more, we selected the four most relevant trends (shown on right) to Faith in Nature and our target consumers to guide our designs:
Immersive Storytelling
Third Place
Garden Therapy
Play-Tail
To answer this question., we created a Customer Journey Map for the context of our customer entering a beauty and skincare store in Centrale for the first time (with key needs and desires are highlighted):
Through our Customer Journey Map, we discovered numerous opportunities across service innovation and retail store design that we incorporated to inform our general design mood board (left) and proposed floor plan (right).
Design Mood Board
Proposed Floor Plan
Designing a mobile application that facilitates seamless customer experiences with the different in-store touch points
Design Goals
As part of our proposal, I designed a mobile application for Faith in Nature, called In Nature. It is designed to encompass traditional mobile e-commerce and omnichannel retail functionalities that can remain beyond the pop-up activation, while it also has unique functionalities that serve to complement our physical store touch points. It aims to fulfil the following goals:
Wireframes
Providing additional convenience and educational value
Facilitating customer interactions with in-store technologies (e.g. QR codes for product info, QR codes for drinks ordering , event management tablet for in-store workshops)
Building strong consumer connections and loyalty towards Faith in Nature
How does this mobile app complement each consumer touch point in-store?
Place for photo carousel
Final Prototype: In Nature
Embark on a journey with our persona, Samantha, on her delightful visit to our pop-up store!
This demo video showcases the key user interactions that were designed to help Samantha and her son achieve an optimised in-store and omnichannel brand experience with Faith in Nature.
“PodKST is a viable and highly adaptable extension of our current business model. It accurately grasped at the core of our mission in connecting local communities.”
— Joseph Hall, Executive Director of Kelly Strayhorn Theatre