Design new community retail experiences
My contribution: Led research planning process, developed "Hear, See, Feel" framework for rapid analysis, presented findings to executives, developed design principles, co-created concepts based on design principles
Team: Alok Shinde, Bryan Spence, Gaurav Bradoo, Mark Supert, Tanu Sharma
Type: Consulting project
When: Winter break 2015
Where: Mumbai, India
The entire ID team visited the Dadar Flower Market. It was full of activities as wholesalers negotiated with buyers, many of whom sell flowers outside temples throughout the city. This photo was taken around 5am well after opening.
What's the solution?
Our solution concepts (confidential) were new ways for Godrej & Boyce to engage with communities in a retail setting. At the core of each solution are five principles developed through immersive research.
5 key principles
- Shared struggles and celebrations build cohesion with a community.
- Stories serve as important tools to transfer knowledge throughout a community.
- Being in a community is like coming home. It provides emotional comfort and security for its members.
- Leveling is a key principle to instill mutual respect in sustainable communities.
- Strong communities instill a sense of collective pride.
We spoke with a jeweler, who expressed the importance of knowing the story behind each piece he sold. this set was inspired by an ancient goddess.
This lock and safe retailer told us the story of how he and hundreds of other shop owners in Crawford Market banded together to shut down business for an entire week as a sign of solidarity. They were protesting a new tax that was due to be implemented...and it worked.
This is Dharavi, a slum. However, the images you might see on TV or from the movie, "Slumdog Millionaire", looked and felt nothing like we experienced. Dharavi felt like a home. A local boy gave us a tour through winding streets past clean and tidy homes and businesses.
We met with members of a Gurudrawa, a Sikh temple. They welcomed us to Langar, which is a shared meal offered to all guests regardless of social status.
We spoke with members of the Parsi community, who shared stories about what it means to be a Parsi and how proud they are to be a part of such a close-knit group with a rich history in the area.
How did we get there?
Our topic space, “community”, was so broad that we made our main goal to collect as much rich information as possible from a broad set of community organizations with the intent to reframe how Godrej thought about retail in a community context. We met with people from ten different communities, from retailers to religious groups and educators.
Takeaways
- Truly immerse yourself. I learned so much from sitting in homes, temples and retail spaces.
- Challenge your assumptions about what defines good research. Instead of spreadsheets and transcriptions, our data was hand-written on post-its. Though uncomfortable at first, I knew this was appropriate given our project scope.
- Bring your stakeholders along with you. One of our team members was especially appreciative of how we taught him new ways of generating ideas other than just market research, and promised to implement our methods in his own work.
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