Evaluating Isle of Paradise’s in-store self-tanning fixture

Isle of Paradise

Role: UX Researcher

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Challenge

INVESTIGATE SELF TANNERS BEHAVIOURS AND EVALUATE THE EFFECTIVENESS OF FIXTURE

Isle of Paradise approached us because they wanted to investigate self-tanners' behaviours and preferences and evaluate the effectiveness and inclusiveness of the Isle of Paradise’s shop fixture. This included assessing the effectiveness of IOP merchandising and its messaging in helping consumers make confident purchase decisions.

The result

Presented insights

I presented prioritised findings and design recommendations to inform future brand and product fixture developments and delivered a report which included supporting images and participant audio recordings.

Upsold future research activities

Identified next steps to action insights and implement recommendations utilising activities such as A/B testing and collaborative stakeholder workshops.

The full story

Isle of Paradise wanted to understand how users interact, behave and feel about their in-store fixture and products at Boots. While also discovering how their fixture compares to the fixture of competitors St. Tropez and Bondi.

The research objectives include:

  • Gain insight into how engaging and persuasive Isle of Paradise’s in-store fixture was.

  • Assessing the effectiveness of IOP’s brand and product messaging, helping consumers choose the right product.

  • Explore whether their brand image aligns with consumers’ perceptions of being innovative, inclusive, and diverse.

  • Gain further insight into the preferences of self tanners and why tanning products appeal to them and why.

 

Evaluating users experience in-store

Collaborated with another consultant to plan, create a discussion guide, and conduct a contextual inquiry, interviewing 20 pre-recruited participants in the tanning aisle of Boots’ White City store.

We recruited both self-tanners and non-self-tanners from different age groups to diversify our participant’s experience. The client requested that we exclude men from the research, which we did challenge but they were firm in their desire to focus on their prime user segment.

 

The affects of bias- “Cheap side”

During the study, we observed that participants often had a preconceived notion that aisles typically have an “expensive side” and a “cheap side,” which seemed to influence participants perception and feelings of the brands. To explore whether this bias affected their responses, we started alternating which sides we entered from to ensure diverse exposure to the brands displayed as Isle of Paradise was located centrally on the fixture.

Unfortunately, the affect of alternating sides on participants responses was inconclusive so we didn’t report any affect of this bias but I did raised it with stakeholders to consider investigating further to inform the location of their fixture in the featured section of Boots.

DELIVERED

presented findings/ RECOMMENDATIONS report

We presented a prioritised findings report with design recommendations to inform brand, fixture and product developments that aims to improve user experience and brand perception. We also delivered supporting images of the study and participant audio recordings.

2 key insights presented to the client were:

  • Most participants appreciated the products being organised by shades and were able to quickly identify which products were available in their ideal shade.

  • Some participants felt IOP’s tagline “EveryBODY” on brand merchandising boards necessitates the involvement of a wider variety of models than what’s currently used including older models and a deeper variety of skin tones.

Key takeaways

Challenging the client

Key stakeholders came to us with a pre-written discussion guide to follow during the sessions, which had leading and limited questioning. We responded to the client with our concerns and an iterated version of the discussion guide, which they responded to well with a high level of trust in the changes.

Upsell future activities

Additionally, this project allowed me to gain confidence in upselling future research activities during debriefing presentations. I upsold research methods such as preference testing to support the next stages of iterating the fixtures merchandising and products.