PROBLEM
Nordstrom’s appointment is an opportunity to change a one-time shopping trip into a lifetime customer relationship.
Customers book 1-on-1 consultation with stylists on the iOS app. Having a positive experience gives users special reasons to return and drive more deliberate purchase.
Tailoring
Styling
Beauty
PROBLEM
However, most customers abandoned the booking on the mobile app
To investigate product risks in detail, we scoped a 3-weeks in person moderated sessions with long-term and new customers, covering initial discovery to rescheduling stage. In this phase, I coordinated participant recruitment, led whiteboarding sprint for test structure and conducted 70% of the sessions.
FINDING
Participants struggled to get to appointments quickly, were left unsure of the service types and failed to reschedule when given time conflict.
As part of whiteboarding, we broke the entire flow into 7 core tasks: assigned scenarios instead of a usual checklist to complete. During this phase, we prioritized task success rate, task error rate, perceived task difficulty, System Usability Scale (ISO 9241) and post-task interview: qual and quant.
SOLUTION
Building on Nordstrom's prioritization framework, we presented data led findings and 10 solutions to 50+ Nordstrom stakeholders from product, engineering and styling.
To wrap up this partnership, I owned the recommendations and spearheaded the presentation storyline, while my team had each section of task and data wrangling. I presented those recommendations along with data-backed findings for the stakeholders meeting.
Participants
Participant Criteria
4 novice · 2 experienced appointment bookers
Participants were adult iOS users and Nordstrom customers with experience or interest in services. Ages: 18–25 (1), 26–31 (3), and 40+ (2).
The screener listed $500+ annual spend. The observed sample included one participant at $300–500 and five over $500.
The end-to-end journey
Task 1
T1
Appointment Booking Discovery
Scenario: You’re getting ready to attend a wedding on the evening of March 30th and you would like to get your makeup done professionally at Nordstrom for the event.
Task 1
Finding 1.2
Search results don’t bring participants to appointments which caused them to give up
Frequency
“In the search function. I start with makeup appointments. And it gives me a bunch of makeup. Which I don't want. So I try and search again…. I'd probably give up at this point” [P4]
Task 1
Recommendation 1.1
Make it easier for users to find appointments on ‘Store’ page
Task 1
Recommendation 1.2
When users search for queries related to "appointment"
Task 1
Recommendation 1.2
Include services or appointments in search results
Task 3–4
T3–4
Selecting Staff
Selecting Availability
Task 3
Recommendation 3
To make it easier for people to find a desired staff, consider adding more staff information
Task 4
Finding 4
While participants who selected “no preference” found availability, others found their desired staff unavailable
1. Lack of availability
Task 4
Recommendation 4
Task 5 & Task 6
T5
Adding Personal Information
T6
Review Booking Confirmation
Task 5 & 6
Finding 5
6/6 Participants successfully added personal information and reviewed booking confirmation but expected to see more information on the “Confirmation” screen
Confirmation page expectations:
Task 7
T7
Reschedule Booked Appointment
Scenario: You realized the date is wrong and the wedding is actually March 23rd at 6pm. Show me what you’d do next.
Task 7
Finding 7.1
After going through several errors, people were unable to reschedule
7.1 Mismatched expectation for ‘booked’ appointment retrieval
7.3 Store Call Inconvenience
“I might need to call them but don’t wish to call. I’m concerned about the wait time of calling, doesn't make sense. Don’t want to call, will end up doing a noshow” [P1]
Task 7
Recommendation 7.1
Consider implementing a designated space to track appointments to ease both appointment discovery (T1) and rescheduling friction (T7)
“I assume there is a place to reschedule somewhere in app” [P5]
Task 7
Recommendation 7.2
Task 7
Finding 7.2
Cancellation is the “workaround” path people took in order to reschedule
“I do these things at 11pm at night. I'd have to put in on my calendar for the next day...that’s just a pain. I might just call Sephora at this point...cause you can just walk in”
“If you can change your flight on Southwest...I feel like makeup (appointments) should be easier” [P5]
“You can't really modify, don't want to have to do the whole process again” [P5]
Task 7
Recommendation 7.3
Make it less cumbersome to change date and time (reschedule)
Next steps
Next Steps
Quick Wins
Service category terms didn’t match participant’s mental models
Beyond brands, participants expect more information on staff profiles
People were unable to reschedule
Next steps · Short and long term
Quick Wins
Many participants were not able to find appointments immediately
Long Term
Appointment discovery and rescheduling are the most difficult tasks
