Cashier personas to develop training for a new point of sale system.
Dates:
Role:
Description:
Disclaimer:
May - August 2018
UX Researcher, Visual Designer
Three personas of Lowes cashiers, researched and designed to guide the design and training of a new point of sale (POS) system.
I will not be sharing the personas online. If requested, I can provide copies of the visual personas and the frameworks in-person. Thank you for understanding!
The Problem
Lowes is internally designing and building a new point of sale (POS) system. During the testing phase, the new system is in use at three stores near the headquarters in Mooresville NC. This makes it easy for designers to receive feedback from cashiers using the new system, help them troubleshoot, and observe their use. However, when the new system is rolled out nationwide, training will be key in onboarding cashiers.
Learning about cashiers motivations, learning styles, technology use, and specific pain points is important for developing a training program and materials.
Primary Research
I conducted one on one interviews with cashiers in North Carolina. These interviews were conducted in stores at the cash registers. I recorded audio and asked pre-prepared questions and some spontaneous follow up questions.
I talked with a total of nine cashiers, including multiple floaters and one pro-services cashier. Cashiers varied in age and experience working at Lowes.
Secondary Research
I looked at many personas that Lowes had previously developed, and personas that were available online. The majority of personas both internally and externally were for customers and focused on purchasing motivations, brands or products they like, and overarching goals.
Clarissa Ishak’s personas for salmon hatchery volunteers were some of the only personas I found that focused on folks as employees. Clarissa’s personas helped me focus on categories I wanted to ask questions about.
Persona Development
When interviewing cashiers and analyzing my notes, I noticed three distinct groups of people in terms of their opinions of the two POS systems and their motivations for working at Lowes.
Because there are three groups of people, it made sense to develop three personas. The questions I developed lent themselves to the development of specific persona attributes and categories. I used a framework for persona development that contains three columns.
This framework allowed me to be sure that my persona’s characteristics were supported by the research. Each persona has nine unique categories.
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Biography
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Technology Use
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Personality Traits
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Tasks at Work
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Goals
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Frustrations
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Employee & Lowes
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Motivations for Working at Lowes
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Suggestions
Visual Design
I sketched a layout for the personas. I wanted to use as many visuals as possible, because most personas I found during my secondary research were very text heavy. This resulted in creating icons that were used throughout the personas. Additionally, I tried to communicate information visually as well as textually.
The Solution
The three personas each embody a different type of cashier with different opinions of the old and new Point of Sale (POS) system.
The Seasoned Parent
A middle aged person who has been at Lowes for a long time. They are excited about the possibilities of the new POS system, but would like for it to be fully functional and bug free.
The Particular Retiree
A retired person who has been at Lowes for a couple of years. They love the flexibility and quickness of the old POS system.
The Confused Newbie
A younger person who is inexperienced at Lowes. They love the ease and usability of the new POS system and dislike learning the old POS system.
Disclaimer: I will not be sharing the personas online. If requested, I can provide copies of the visual personas and the frameworks in-person. Thank you for understanding!
Reflection
I'm proud of what I was able to accomplish at a fortune 40 company in just one summer. Others found my personas compelling and representative of Lowes cashiers. The Director of UX suggested showing this to the entire team designing the new POS system, and one of the Product Managers in that presentation suggested showing it to our IT partners.
One issue was that I initially planned to conduct interviews around 4th of July weekend which is one of the busiest times of the year for the stores. I had to quickly jump into interviews in order to avoid those dates. This resulted in less interviews than I would have liked. I was hoping for 10-15 interviews and completed nine.
Another problem I ran into was that I wasn't able to interview a diverse group of people - specifically in terms of ethnicity and age. I interviewed one person under 30, and no people of color. I believe this was due to the location I was interviewing in (suburbs in North Carolina). A subset to this issue was that I did not have my own transportation because I flew to North Carolina from Washington. This meant that I relied on others, like my manager, to provide me with transportation which further limited the store locations I was able to visit.
