Abstract
«Fil rouge (literally, ‘red thread’) is the French metaphor for a guiding idea or recurring element that ensures the coherence and consistency through a story.» This project is built around the problem of the existing inconsistency between online and offline retail channels. I particularly focus on the apparel retail industry and its inconsistency in terms of customer experience.
Research and Development Context
The extensive research phase made it clearly evident that both online and offline retail channels are very powerful and prolific. On the one hand we have the traditional brick and mortar store that is still a king and on the other hand we have the whole endless world of online shopping with its benefits. My project is looking for the possibility to define an easy way (that to say, a way to make it feasible and desirable) to reduce the gap between e-commerce and physical store, and improve the shopping experience for the customers, and possibly for the retailers too. An additional point I wanted to add to the project is related to certain physical retail solutions that try to deal with post Covid-19 pandemic “new normal” reality. In these months we saw how we had to (and still have to) invent, learn and put in action in a very quick and unexpected way so many new ways to interact with everyday activities; and shopping is among them.
User Experience
Fil Rouge is a service that aims to provide a pleasant and effortless solution for the online shoppers to complete their customer journey in a physical store even if they started it online. Young generations actually already display this flexible behavior and are less prone to distinguish online from offline in a very sharp way. On the other hand, Fil Rouge takes care to maintain the connection between the physical and the digital and aims to enhance the strong benefits on every side of the customer journey.
Interface and Interaction Modality
The actual interface for the final user is shown as a single button, a little plug-in, that can be added to any existing e-commerce site. The role of the button is to book in three quick steps an in-store visit to complete the shopping journey. Behind the scenes, there is a tool for the retail assistants that gives them the opportunity to know their customers and to interact with them in a much more personalized way.
