Exploring the human side of a more personal retail experience.
AI-generated concept imagery / Proposed project
A draft strategic design research framework exploring how fashion retailers could build more meaningful customer relationships. Research question: How might clienteling help customers feel recognized, supported, and in control? This is a proposed research framework; fieldwork and findings are not yet available.
Personalization can begin with a conversation about a person’s needs, rather than a prediction based only on purchases. The design challenge is to make that attention useful and welcome across both physical and digital touchpoints.
Proposed methods include customer interviews, retail associate interviews, a shopping journey map, and a review of existing clienteling touchpoints. Questions would explore when assistance feels helpful, when follow-up feels intrusive, and what customers want a brand to remember.
Three hypotheses to test: customers may value continuity with an associate; they may prefer advice tied to a specific occasion; and they may want clear control over saved preferences. These are questions for research, not established customer insights or findings.
A proposed service combines an optional preference conversation, appointment preparation, a small curated selection, and a consent-based follow-up. Associates would have space to add relevant context, while customers could review, change, or remove what is remembered.
Future development could include a customer journey map, an appointment brief, a preference-control screen, and a prototype follow-up message. The visual references illustrate an approachable fashion context; they are not completed service prototypes.
A prototype study could assess perceived helpfulness, comfort with data use, ease of changing preferences, and interest in returning to the same associate. No research results or business impact are claimed. The next stage would replace these working hypotheses with evidence from participants.
