Client: Migros Group
Role: UX/UI
Devices: iPad

Challenge

Migros, Switzerland's largest retail company and the country’s largest supermarket chain, approached the Apple+IBM MobileFirst for iOS program to design an app for their trade marketing associates whose function included being brand ambassadors for products sold in the Migros grocery stores, learning about the different products, researching the competitive landscape, promoting and sampling products throughout stores, rolling out taste tests and completing feedback for the brand sponsoring the events.

The Trade Marketing Intellingence unit was created to promote everyday goods like cookies, soaps and dairy products throughout the Migros supermarkets and elsewhere. This unit relied on back-office personnel to manage a team of promoters who were in charge of setting up their display booth, gain product knowledge, showcase products to customers, answer questions and gauge customer satisfaction with their respective brand.

These promotions grew in popularity with supermarket shoppers and the promotion team quickly expanded to several hundred promoters and eight field managers. Still, the back-office staff relied on old manual processes that required managing the promotional workflow, scheduling promoters via phone call, post, messenger and personal email.

Scaling meant hiring more back-office personnel while workflows still being handled in an analog fashion. This generated confusion and lack of organization which trickled down to the promoters. Consequently, the quality of retail promotions suffered due to a lack of standardization in manual processes.

Process

We engaged the users in a 3-day design thinking workshop at the Apple Enterprise Design Center in Cupertino, California. Users included back-office staff as well as promoters. We explored and outlined their duties through a “Day in the life” exercise. We learned that their old process involved keeping track of receipts, paper documents, emails, phone calls, text messages, etc.

We also learned that promoters were mostly nontechnical users and thus required a solution that would need little to no training and/or onboarding to ensure high adoption once the solution was deployed. After talking with users for a few hours, the lead designer and I broke out into a separate workspace to create a “Golden Thread” draft. This document encapsulated the to-be scenario for how the app would work with the user, integrating our design solutions into the narrative and addressing the major pain points that would then translate into the top features we would design and develop for the first release.

We then worked with the users to refine the Golden Thread and ensure our solutions aligned with their needs. While promoters worked on technical requirements with our developers, we began wireframing key screens that would help us quickly test assumptions and design solutions with our users.

After a few iterations and great discussion, we moved those few screens to high fidelity to show our vision for the app. At this point, there were many unanswered questions but this methodology, designed by Apple to quickly come up with solutions that we would continue to refine after the workshop, proved to be successful with the many clients we engaged.

Results

The new app empowered promoters to successfully complete key tasks like view instructional videos, read marketing documents, complete product quizzes, track expenses, view and edit notes, receive notifications and submit reports to the back office. They were now able to get the latest information and reporting tools to help them prepare for the various promotions. We took their existing analog processes and leveraged the iPad’s capabilities to design an app that would simplify and supercharge the way they worked. This led to better informed and trained promoters, more job satisfaction and improved promotion quality.

Press Coverage

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/m-industry-transforms-its-mobile-workforce-with-ibm-mobilefirst-for-ios-300515379.html