UNIVERSAL STUDIOS
“MAN vs MACHINE”
OBJECTIVE
Designed to increase speed of service, control, and reliability, self-service kiosks can provide huge benefits to a customer. However, Universal Studios Hollywood found customers seemed to prefer the more traditional, staffed checkouts. Was it because customers were craving the face to face interaction, or was it because the kiosks weren’t meeting their needs? We wanted to know more.
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Team| Michael Carpenter + Emily Keen
Time Frame| 3 weeks
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DISCOVER
To learn more about user experience with self checkout kiosks and staffed checkouts (teller experience), we conducted qualitative research. We observed and interviewed guests and workers over a three day period noting positives aspects of a kiosk purchase vs teller experience, and also identified customer pain points and areas for improvement.
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Skills &Tools| Discussion Guides, One-One Interviews, Ethnography, Heuristic Audit (physical, digital space), UX design recommendations, technical reporting, journey mapping
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12
Follow up interviews with kiosk guests
124
Observational research of guests at kiosks
45
Observational research of guests at teller booths
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SYNTHESIS
Research notes were compiled and synthesized into an annotated report. Because my colleague and I have a masters degree in Industrial Design, we were able to assess the human factors of interacting with the physical product within its environment, in addition to the digital interface.
An added bonus to the User experience evaluation was that my colleague Emily and I both have a masters degree in industrial design so the human factors aspect of assessing physical product space and environment was definitely in our wheelhouse.
SCREEN AUDIT
PHYSICAL SPACE
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CUSTOMER JOURNEY
A customer journey map was created to communicate what the ideal customer experience should be for purchasing a ticket from the kiosk.
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Wire Frames
Universal Studios requested wire framing an "easy win" alternative to the existing kiosk purchase flow. We used assets from Universal Studios’ online purchase flow, which was a more effective experience and applied it to the kiosk purchase flow. This made the kiosk experience cohesive with the online experience, and easy for Universal Studios to implement.
