Observing and Looking for Improvements in User Experience — The CVS Observation.

Our User Experience Design Immersive class was tasked with visiting a CVS store and observing the movement of traffic, shopper’s interaction with the store and the overall experience of the checkout process.

I went to the CVS near McPherson Metro station, at about 3pm on a hot August Wednesday afternoon. This CVS is relatively small and was not very busy.

This store has one floor and a basic long and thin layout with a small annex.

As you enter, you are faced with the self checkouts and the baskets are immediately to your left. As with all CVS stores, the first aisle you come to is food. How the rest of the store is laid out varies from store to store, but the content of the aisles and their labelling using large signs above the aisles remains consistent.

The consistency between CVS stores helps people find what they are looking for. You may not know exactly where the shampoo is, but you know it is with the hair products and you know to look at the signs above the aisles to find the hair products.

In this CVS there is a greeter in the area of the self checkouts. His role does not seem to be to actually greet the incoming customers but to assist the customers who are ready to check out by directing them to the next available register and resolving any self checkout issues.

In terms of movement around the store, the aisles are tight, but there is not much that can be done about that in DC.

I observed the customers perusing. They seemed neutral. No-one was walking around overjoyed to be in CVS, but neither was anyone particularly frustrated or annoyed.

In general, people came in, looked around and quickly found what they were looking for. If what they were looking was not easy to find, they asked a member of staff, who were easy to find.

So, locating items did not seem to pose an issue to most customers.

The staffing level seemed appropriate for the time of day and size of the store. I counted four floor staff, including the greeter, there was one person manning a check out and two people manning the pharmacy. As I wandered about the store, I was asked if I needed any help by two separate staff members. The staff were not particularly friendly or cheerful, but they were polite and professional.

There were two options for checking out: the self checkout or the manned checkout, each of which had three registers. However, only one manned register was open. People seemed to choose these two options equally.

I did see a line develop at the manned checkout when the staff member was trying to resolve an issue with a lady who appeared to be complaining about something. He called over another staff member, who I thought was going to open another register, but she went away after answering his question. At this point there were about four customers waiting and and I could see them starting to get frustrated.

To avoid this issue, I would suggest the store be more diligent about opening a new register when more than two people are waiting. Long lines cause problems beyond just frustrating the customers waiting to check out. If the line reaches as far as the aisles this impedes the flow of other customers around the store and it looks messy.

When I had located everything I needed, I decided to check out using the self checkout. I think self checkouts, when they work, are a great idea. They reduce wait time and they provide for greater privacy, which is welcome in a pharmacy.

As self checkouts go, the ones at CVS are reliable. I hardly ever succeed in checking out a whole basket at Harris Teeter without the self checkout needing intervention from a staff member at least once. I rarely have this issue at CVS. However, I do feel it is unnecessary and annoying that the CVS machine talks at you so loudly and tells you the price of each item.

I noticed when I went to pay that the text on the register had not been updated to take into account the activation of the chip reader. The register told me to swipe my card, which I did. Then the card reader told me to insert my card into card reader instead. Since there is no consistency between stores as to whether to swipe or insert chip cards, it would be nice to have some signage indicating the chip reader is in use.

To conclude, because of the consistency between stores, clear signage and availability of floor staff, finding a product is easy. The self checkout was painless, though it would be nice if the machine wasn’t so obnoxiously talkative. Staffing levels in general were appropriate. However, the store needed to be more diligent about moving staff to the registers when necessary to avoid lines. The staff, though polite and professional, were a little glum. I didn’t walk out of CVS marveling at the wonderful and joyous user experience I had just had but the store does what it needs to do.