Toys"R"Us Interactive Gift Guide

Solo UI/UX Designer, 3D Artist

Client: Toys”R”Us + eBay

Team: Director, Business Relation, Engineers, Designer, TRU New Ventures

The Toys”R”Us Interactive Gift Guide is a beautiful fluid interface for customers to explore curated guides for gift purchases, search the in-store inventory and view product locations on an interactive map. The project is deployed in the Toys”R”Us/Babies”R”Us Redwood City store from November 2012 through November 2013.

eBay innovation team (EPIC) partnered with Toys”R”Us New Ventures and worked closely with SVP, Michael Scharff, to bring online and offline shopping experience into a physical store. It was eBay’s first venture into in-store connected kiosk technology.

The Challenge

Grow omni-channel capabilities to enhance store experience, increases conversion, and tracks valuable in-store data.

Discovery

The internet is killing Big Box retail. Store chains need to shrink massively and rapidly. Customers prefer online shopping to stores. Does the future belong to Amazon and other internet-only companies?

Through research, we knew that shoppers are not 100% moving away from the brick and mortar store. Shoppers need a physical store to see, touch and feel the products.

Shoppers are looking for a superior shopping experience the moment they enter the store: Is the shopper getting the best price offer? Are the products easy to find? Great customer service? Easy check out process, no waiting time?

Bringing the online into the offline retail world to create a fun and seamless shopping experience is the mission for this project.

Development Journey

A retail engagement and gamification platform to drive traffic throughout a store space and provide customized shopping experiences on a per-user basis.

A vibrant life-size multi-touch screen greets new users and invites experiences for people of all sizes and ages. The platform presents a fluid dynamic interface to engage shopping tools and playful interactions for shoppers. These experiences are designed to encourage repeat visits and active participation. The applications provide targeted rewards based on continued purchases and interaction with the system. These rewards, which include vouchers and coupons or store points, are designed to be unique to each customer and store, which is encouraging casual shoppers to become loyal patrons.

The interactive device implements smooth, reactive touch interaction and multi-finger gestures such as swiping, scrolling, rotating and pinch-to-zoom. The platform also harnesses camera and infrared sensor technology to recognize faces and body shapes, detect motion, identify crowds, and pinpoint attributes about users such as height, posture, and movement direction.

By providing theatrical and larger-than-life interaction, our platform is designed to instill memorable retail experiences into customers, and grant them tangible rewards for participating in a rich ecosystem of applications.

Curated Gift Search UX Study

The curated gift search guide is an interactive application to help shoppers easily find the perfect gift for the kids. How do we let the shoppers know about this powerful application? I summarized the shopper’s user experience journey in 3 major milestones:

1. Attraction: How to attract shoppers that are outside of the sensing zone to start interacting with the display?

2. Interaction: Once the shoppers are inside the interactive zone, how-to guide shoppers to interact with the application?

3. Engagement: Shoppers engage with the application and find the perfect gift!