UX Unplugged

Barnes & Noble, you’re breaking my UX heart

Barnes & Noble’s storefront remodel reflects a larger, problematic trend in retail spaces

Image by Susan Q Yin on Unsplash

The Barnes & Noble (B&N) in my town recently moved to a new location, undergoing a brand update and remodel in the process. I was shocked at the new store that I walked into but, apparently, these updates began in 2020, as the bookseller looked to revive the performance of its storefronts.

Part of these changes included a change to the company’s logo, which is large, front, and center on each storefront. Apparently my store was still using a logo from the 1990s, so imagine my shock when the new B&N logo jumped over two whole logo iterations to catch up with the times:

The logo I knew and loved was an iteration from the late 90s

B&N’s current (to me, lifeless) logo has allegedly been in place since 2020

And, tragically, B&N followed suit along with the rest of the world to use a timid color scheme and unremarkable font. The new logo may have been jarring for me, but it was only part of the changes I would have to endure throughout my shopping experience. Maybe I should have seen it as a warning sign for the changes to come inside the store. What was once a quiet and welcoming shopping experience now feels over-modernized and sterile.

The remodel sucked the life (and functionality) out of the shopping experience

Was my previous B&N outdated? Sure, maybe a bit.

The former exterior and interior was dated, but had character and charm.

But, personally, I’ll take outdated and full of quirky life over the cold and sterile B&N of today.

The new exterior and interior feels cold, unfamiliar, and bland. The rainy weather on the day I went fit the theme.

The change in appearance broke my heart, but it also broke my entire user experience. Not only was a familiar layout completely changed, it is now presented in a way that makes it nearly impossible to navigate. Previously, I could see over the many bookshelves to scan the store for a sign pointing to the genre section I was seeking. But now, the shelves tower over the store, restricting your view to the section you’re within. Maybe if B&N also chose to utilize wayfinding signs, this error could be forgiven, but they didn’t. Instead, you’re left wandering aimlessly through a maze of shelves, seemingly organized at the whim of the store’s manager.

Clearly I’m upset about the changes, so I decided to try an informal UX-research-flavored experiment. To get a sense of how someone else feels about the new store, I asked a friend (who also hadn’t been to this newly-designed location) to complete 5 tasks in the new B&N.

These tasks were pretty much just different flavors of the same thing, but they all seek to analyze the most important task at B&N — finding the section that you’re looking for. These tasks asked my friend to:

1. Find a board game that 4 people can play.
2. Find a lined journal.
3. Find a children’s fiction book about animals.
4. Find an adult nonfiction book about animals.
5. Find the new vinyl releases.

Finding games

B&N is more than a bookseller, they also offer games, gifts, movies, and music. So task 1 was to find a 4-player board game. Since this was the first task, it was my “participant’s” first journey into the store.

As you enter the maze, there are paths leading every direction between tall stacks of books, beneath glaring fluorescent lights and tall warehouse-style ceilings.

As he traveled through a variety of book genres, he wasn’t sure where to go: “I don’t see anything pointing me to the games”, he said. He decided to “assume they are in the back” and was “guessing it’s by toys”, which he spotted as he rounded a corner. The first game that he pulled happened to be a 4-player game.

The games were tucked away in their own corner.

Finding journals

Task number 2 was to find a lined journal. “I’m just gonna walk because I can’t see anything” he announced. He eventually came across the journal section, but claimed there were “no indicators until I’m there.”

Journals do have their own section, you just have to find it.

Finding children’s books

We had passed through a lot of books, but task number 3 was to find a children’s book, specifically one featuring an animal, just to give the task a more specific direction. He said he was “going back to puzzles because maybe it’s by the games since we’re looking for a kid’s book.” He did find the section near the games, but once again affirmed his confusion: “I just don’t know where anything is until I get to it.”

Notice a trend?

The children’s book my participant located was conveniently on a more visible end cap.

Finding adult non-fiction books

Since I sent my participant to the children’s section, I challenged him with task number 4 to an adult book, this time non-fiction. This was the task that took my participant the longest to complete (a few minutes, but the store is small), as he weaved through a number of fiction and non-fiction genres (once again, I specified that the book should be about animals). He was “going back-to-back” and “just looking at previous things” that he had already encountered. He checked the “new nonfiction” section in hopes of lucking out on a book about animals, but had no luck. Eventually he managed to find a section dedicated to “nature and wildlife”.

The conceptual grouping of this section with nearby sections did make sense, it was just hard to find.

Finding new vinyl releases

For the 5th and final task, I asked my participant to locate new vinyl releases. In our previous B&N, music was located in the back of the store, near the games. Expecting to find it in a similar location, my participant wandered in that direction. It wasn’t there, though. Lost and unsure, he resumed his search and told me that he was “genuinely just walking a grid pattern and looking”. Eventually, he spotted a “movies” section and assumed that vinyls would be nearby (he was right). There wasn’t a “new release” section like there had been at our previous store, so this task was just a half pass.

The section that contained vinyl records was called “entertainment”, although “movies” had their own section.

The section labeled “music” actually just contained books about music.

Throughout his journey, my participant also encountered a number of “random” bookshelves.

My participant wondered what the “book annex” was (seems to be on-sale items of all kinds?).

There was also an entire section dedicated to Harry Potter.

And occasionally, we would round a corner only to find unexpected and awkwardly-placed seating areas (albeit empty — because who wants to sit in the way of people searching for books).

Seating areas were placed randomly throughout the store. Previously, seating either surrounded B&N’s Starbucks cafe or was nestled in one section at the back of the store.

So if you’ve stuck with me through the retelling of my experiment, you’ll probably see the trend that I noticed when I first visited the new store: customers have no direction on where to find what they’re looking for. My tasks were repetitive to make this point. When the purpose of a store is to allow customers to find relevant sections of interest, this is a pretty egregious UX offense. Your users (or customers) need to be able to find what they’re looking for. And unlike online spaces, retail storefronts can’t offer customers a handy search bar, or well organized map in the form of a navigation menu.

So B&N broke my heart, but maybe that’s okay. It’ll inspire me to make the trip to my local independent bookstore, which is more unique and enjoyable anyway.

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