Designing a Wallpaper Display System for an Effective Product Selection : A Collaboration with Midbec Wallpapers

Sammanfattning: We  are  heading  into  a  world  that  is  becoming  more  and  more  digital.  In  the  future  markets,  customers   will   demand   that   some   sort   of   technical  support  is  available  when  they  make  purchases.   This   put   a   big   responsibility   on   companies  that  have  to  satisfy  that  need.  The  wallpaper  industry  has  not  incorporated  many  efficient  support  tools  to  facilitate  the  product  selection at Swedish retailers. This results in that customers  experience  many  issues  when  they  search for new wallpapers. Through a needfinding process, where customers   were   observed   at   retailers,   eight   primary  customer  needs  could  be  established  in  the  project.  These  were  ranked  after  their  relative   importance.   The   results   showed   that   the  most  important  needs  to  satisfy  was  to  give  customer’s  inspiration  and  help  them  visualize  wallpapers  in  environments.  In  two  workshops,  around  100  ideas  on  how  a  system  that  could  satisfy  these  needs  was  generated  in  a  number  of brainstorming sessions. These ideas were then culled   with   various   evaluation   methods   such   as  rating  matrixes,  inventory  methods  and  by  clustering the ideas. At the end of the evaluation process,  four  concepts  remained  with  different  levels of technical demands and implementation requirements.  The  decision  of  which  concept  that was going to be further developed was then made by Midbec. The final system is a service that allows customer to   visualize   chosen   wallpapers   in   a   digital   environment.  The  system  contains  a  screen  with  a connected hand scanner that will be integrated in  Midbec’s  store  interior  and  QR-barcodes  that  is  applied  to  each  wallpaper.  When  a  barcode  is  decoded,  either  with  the  scanner  or  with  a  smartphone, the user connects to Midbec’s newly developed   online   wallpaper   tool   where   the   wallpaper can be seen in different environments. The   benchmarking   showed   that   no   studies   of    effective    wallpaper    displays    has    been    made.  Several  areas  where  new  systems  can  be   implemented   to   support   customers   and   promote  wallpapers  more  effectively  was  found  throughout  the  process.  This  means  that  there  are many possibilities to develop and implement new  designs  in  the  industry.  As  a  conclusion,  this  project  showed  that  a  needfinding  process  should  focus  on  incorporating  the  user  to  the  highest possible level to ensure that reliable data is collected. Another conclusion is that customers experience   many   different   issues   in   today’s   wallpaper  selection  process.  Again,  this  shows  that  there  is  potential  to  develop  systems  that  can improve today’s wallpaper industry.