Reimagine the Argos in-store experience

Founded in 1972, Argos is one of UK’s leading e-commerce retailers offering more than 60,000 products across 800 stores/online and receives 20 million online visits per year.

The task was to reimagine the in-store experience to inspire and aid customers to shop and leverage the best in user interaction. Using the ‘Home’ category as a starting point, the idea was to demonstrate an innovative way for users to browse the breadth of products Argos offers. Ultimately creating an experience that could inspire users to make a purchase.

Researching the brief

To answer the brief and immerse myself into finding the right solution, I started by exploring what’s currently out there by visiting retail stores and researching emerging technologies within this space. I also researched different UX experiences and UI interactions that could provide a valuable experience for Argos in-store. One notable technology was the use of Virtual Reality which could visualise home interiors for users (The missus had a great time with the VR!).

Research - user experience
Research - AR
Research - Touch screens
Research - in-store space

Brainstorming and low fidelity sketching

I then brainstormed and sketched ideas of what features could be useful within the experience. Key questions kept surfacing in my mind, which helped progress me to the solution:

  1. Why would customers spend time browsing in-store, when they have their own tablets or smart phones to use at there own convenience?
  2. With the way Argos is setup all products aren’t available to be viewed in-store. So how can customers get a feel for product they wish to purchase?

The answer was to not only create an experience that felt fluid and inspiring to browse the breadth of products on offer, but also something that would be personal to the customer and to make it worthwhile for them to visit an Argos store – Virtual Reality.

Inspiring customers to shop

The look and feel adopted a clean UI, blending the Argos brand with large product photography to immerse users, with clear navigation and CTAs. The journey through the product would inspire users and then provide detail on-demand.

To encourage browsing and to showcase key USPs of products, editorial content was surfaced which could easily scanned and shared.

My Argos

To push the personal aspect of the concepts, the idea was to have a “My Argos” area within the in-store experience that would enable customers to take something away and encourage repeat visits. My Argos is an area where users can drag and drop products from anywhere within the experience into customisable room “buckets”. The rooms can then be viewed and customised to suit the user’s tastes with there chosen products, which can then be shared or viewed in VR to get a feel for products.