One of my favorite research afternoons involved going to the LEGO Store for work. A very respectable use of company time, as it turned out.
At Ulta Beauty, I was the lead UX designer on a pilot for an in-store digital kiosk. We had a broad ambition: help people shop, and make it easy and delightful. We also had some fairly basic unanswered questions. What should it do? What should it look like? Where, physically, should it go?
None of the designers or developers on the project had made this kind of experience before. We could have spent a great deal of time in a meeting discussing what we imagined people might do.
Instead, we planned an afternoon visiting Chicago retailers with digital experiences in their stores.
Watch the approach. And the avoidance.
We looked at how people approached the screens. We also noticed when they didn’t. A beautifully designed interface has a fairly serious limitation if nobody wants to walk over to it.
Then we tried the experiences ourselves, taking photographs, videos, and notes. At the LEGO Store, you could hold up a box and see a 3D version of the assembled set on a screen. It was a lovely example of technology answering a question someone might actually have while standing in a store: what will this look like when it’s built?
That was more useful to us than simply collecting interfaces we liked. We were looking at what made a digital experience worth someone’s attention in that particular place.
Bring everyone into the learning
Back at the office, we compared what we’d noticed. Because design and development colleagues had been there together, we had a shared set of experiences to discuss. We could point to a moment we’d all seen, hear what someone else had picked up on, and build from there.
Our conversations opened up practical possibilities for our own kiosk: helping someone locate a product, check a price, or find an associate. Those were opportunities to explore, not a list of features I can claim we launched.
I also remember the value of doing it together. Everyone helped plan, observe, and brainstorm. It made the work more collaborative, and it was a good afternoon with people I enjoyed.
A field trip needs a question
If I were borrowing this approach for a new project, I’d keep it simple: agree on what we want to learn, choose a few relevant places, and pay attention to the context as much as the screen. Try the experience. Notice where you hesitate. Leave room for different observations.
Then make time to compare notes while the details are fresh. What did we actually see? What are we inferring? What should we investigate next?
Sometimes a useful next step is to leave the conference room and look around. Occasionally, there will also be LEGO.
