Teaming up with our partners Dynamic Yield and ContentSquare, we ran an Insights-led Experimentation Workshop for our client Primark and for all of the 60+ attendees.
The structure of the workshop is actually the same as what we do for our clients on a regular basis when it comes to generating new ideas based on solid user research and quantitative insights.
On this occasion Primark generously offered up their digital click & collect journey as the workshop canvas.
A couple of weeks before, our UX team had conducted Opportunity Discovery Research including usability testing with Primark’s target audience which revealed some very interesting customer problem statements and opportunities to tackle in the workshop. Excellent work by Andrew Lytton and Julian Hale from Creative CX for the research findings.
It was a day filled with user journey insights, expert analysis and some creative hands-on activities with some great networking opportunities.
Annette Rowson, Web Optimisation Lead, and Humphrey Rose, Head of Digital Experience at Primark kicked off the day for us by sharing their insights into Primark’s digital transformation journey.
Chris Gibbins, CXO at Creative CX, then led the audience through some problem statements showing clips from the moderated usability sessions.
And thanks to James Carroll from ContentSquare, who brought along quantitative ContentSquare insights to help quantify the size of these opportunities.
The perfect combination of qual and quant which is so important for this kind of work.
User insights and customer problems
Our task was to understand and address a particularly tricky to solve customer problem statement related to the click & collect journey which is currently being trialled by Primark.
Evidence and insights were presented.
And then the question was proposed… How might we improve the overall effectiveness of the click & collect journey for users and the business?
Crazy 8’s
To answer this question, we participated in the Crazy 8’s ideation session.
Each person in a team folded a piece of paper in half three times, into eight sections and were put to the test by being given eight minutes to generate up to eight ideas.
Why we do Crazy 8’s:
- Rapid generation of ideas – encourages quick idea generation, allowing teams to explore a wide range of possible solutions to a problem in a short amount of time. Crucially this moves people on from getting fixated on their first solution, which is often the case in unstructured ideation sessions.
- Diverse perspectives = diverse range of ideas – in product experimentation we always need to consider and test a number of ideas to a single problem to give us the best change of solving that problem. To get ahead of the competition we also need to be creative and aim to design experiences that are better than what’s been done before.
- Throw-away-ability – the freedom Crazy 8’s gives you can lead to brand new exciting directions you would have never previously considered.
- The wild card – By aiming for at least two wild card solutions this again helps to push people to more adventurous ideas.
This was a great exercise to get as many ideas down and focus on the quality of ideas, rather than feasibility.
The next phase was to discuss everyone’s ideas as a group and decided on two possible solutions to take forward.
Co-creation & paper-prototyping
Next up, it was time to get creative to bring two potential solutions to life using print-outs, scissors, glue sticks, and pens within a 45 minute time frame.
The groups began to get busy cutting and sticking, whilst not forgetting about the problem we were trying to solve, as well as thinking about the target audience and the end-to-end journey.
And of course… Have fun!
Teams were encouraged to be adventurous and creative with their designs, and they certainly didn’t disappoint!
The best thing about these types of events is prioritised and structured ideation aimed at solving authentic customer problems, leveraging user insights and data, rather than relying on random brainstorming.
Ideally experimentation teams need to be testing three or four variations against a control, rather than just one variation.
It can sometimes be tough to find that perfect solution to a problem first time round, so this entire exercise really pushes teams to discover and include diverse and adventurous potential solutions to then take into experimentation.
Presentation time
It was great to see everyone present their two solutions confidently and with such passion, alongside the amazing creativity shown in the prototypes.
Whilst there was definitely an overlap in many of the ideas there was also an incredible variety of execution with some real twists on the common themes.
For example, the idea of making it easy for users to choose their local store based on geo-targeting much earlier in the journey to make the journey much more convenient later on when adding items to their basket.
Some teams impressively managed to demonstrate their ideas with paper made pop-ups, sliding pull tabs, and expandable banners.
It was definitely going to be a tough choice for the judges to call a winning team.
Live demo
Whilst the judges were deliberating, Liz Powell from Dynamic Yield took us through a demo that we had previously worked on before the event to solve the problem.
Karan Dhanoya from Creative CX carried out all the development work and then Liz Powell from Dynamic Yield put the campaign together in front of everyone to show how Dynamic Yield works.
She did an amazing job demonstrating the tool whilst holding the microphone in one hand!
Awards
It was finally time to announce the winners of the insights workshop! Bottles of champagne were on the line here, so it was getting serious.
After a table drumroll, it was announced that team three were the winners!
A well-deserved win as their prototypes included a collection of creative pull-tabs, pop ups, and not forgetting a well thought out solution to the proposed question.
Their solution really understood and thought about the end-to-end journey for customers and how to make the online experience smoother.
We can’t wait to include their ideas and many of the others in the actual experimentation and personalisation roadmap.
Celebratory Drinks
The celebration didn’t stop there!
We then headed over to The Oyster Shed to keep the drinks flowing, eat some delicious food, and celebrate the winners.
Overall, it was a fantastic day of learning and collaborating across various teams, as well as a great opportunity to meet some other experts in experimentation, personalisation, and user experience.
We run these workshops for our clients and events like this from time to time.
They are a fantastic way to help people understand the importance of getting a better understanding of your customers needs and working on a broader range of creative solutions (often helped by engaging a wider audience) to add to your roadmaps for experimentation and product improvements.
