Advancing accessibility for Warby Parker employees and customers

Project Overview

The retail experience can be anxiety inducing for those who are Deaf because of challenges that arise with communicating their needs to employees. Warby Parker’s new feature in POE (Point of Everything), an internal checkout system, will help bridge the communication gap between employees and customers who are Deaf.

Role

User Research, Information Architecture, Interaction design, UI design, Prototyping & Testing

Completed as a student case study for DesignLab’s UX Academy. All logos, trademarks, and POE are property of Warby Parker.

Step 1: Research

In order to better understand the eyewear industry, employees and consumers, I identified the following research methods to better understand the problem.

• Secondary research

• Subject matter expert interview

• Customer and employee interviews

• Surveys

• Competitive analysis

This project began with secondary research on the market, the eyewear industry, which allowed me to better understand how retail spaces address accessibility in physical and digital spaces. In addition to that, it allowed me to read and hear first hand accounts of the experience of shopping as someone who is Deaf. With this research, I began to understand that there was a serious lack of infrastructures in retail spaces to accommodate communication between employees and customers who are Deaf. I wanted to explore why these communication barriers exist in retail environments and how employees and customer navigate this.

I moved on to interviews and saw two users that needed to be addressed initially: employees and customers. In order to get a better understanding of how customers and employees communicate, I interviewed Warby Parker employees and customers who are Deaf.

Understanding the employee

With employees, I wanted to understand what information is needed from customers as they seek to assist them in their shopping journey. Key questions such as “how do you communicate with customers” and “what questions do you ask customers” were pivotal to understand the employee’s needs. It was also important to note how employees address accessible practices in the workplace and if they feel well equipped in doing so. I addressed these points in user interviews and through a survey.

Employee interviews

Three participants who have worked or currently work at Warby Parker were interviewed. They were asked about motivations for working at WP, questions they ask customers and how they would assist a customers with whom they cannot verbally communicate with.

The goals for the interview included:

• Identifying employee’s pain points and successes with POE

• Exploring how employees assist customers

• Identifying employee’s needs when assisting customers

• Investigating key communication points with customers
  

The key findings for the interview included:

• Employees need information on customer’s lifestyle and stylistic preferences to assist them. This includes an employee prescription, whether they like to go fishing, if they work an office job, general aesthetic and material preferences.

• They need to easily input information into POE as they receive it from customers. This includes employee preferences for glasses or contacts, insurance and prescription information.

• Employees have a general lack of disability awareness and training and rely on improvisation to assist customers with disabilities. 1/3 participants assisted a customer who is Deaf and found it challenging to adhere to Covid protocol of wearing a mask and working with a customer who relied in lip reading .

• Employees want support from their employer in engaging with customers who are Deaf. Specifically, this would include training or any other measures to assist customers who are Deaf and provide the best customer service.

Employee survey

After the employee interviews, I had a general sense that the participants wanted more support or training to assist customers with disabilities, including those who are Deaf. To get a more broad sense of workers in the retail space, I conducted a survey to gauge employee awareness on ASL (American Sign Language) and customers with disabilities.

Employees were asked on a scale of 1-5 (1 being the least and 5 being the most) how well equipped they are to assist a customer who is Deaf.

Personas

Data from user interviews and secondary research influenced the making of these personas. Two types of Warby Parker employees are represented here; a Sales Advisor and an Optician respectively. Both of these employees communicate with customers to ensure a smooth checkout process or to make sure their glasses are well fitted.

Understanding the customer

Even though the end user of this app is the Warby Parker employee, customer research was necessary. If this app is meant to help employees communicate with customers, I had to understand who this audience was in order to design something effective and useful for the employee.

In the context of this project, the customer is Deaf and it was very important to understand the basics of hearing. With that I conducted an interview with an audiologist. She relayed the functions of the ear, cochlear implants and how hearing and understanding is on a spectrum. With that knowledge, I sought to gain a better understanding of a customer who is Deaf and began to ask questions about their experiences with shopping. It was very important to understand the customer’s needs, pain points, and challenges they can face in retail spaces which are not accessible to their needs. I conducted interviews and a survey with over 100 participants to dive deeper on the issue of customer needs.

In my research on the customer, I found that 1 in 4 Americans have a disability.

Hearing loss is the third most common disability after mobility and cognition. 3.6% of population (around 11 million individuals) identifies as deaf or having difficulty with hearing.

People with disabilities are the third largest market segment in the US. Those who are Deaf or hard of hearing have the highest discretionary income within this segment, amounting to $9 billion.

Customer interviews

Three participants who wear glasses and are Deaf or hard of hearing were interviewed.

The goals for the interview included:

• Learning customer’s experience with shopping

• Identifying a customer’s priorities when shopping in store

• Exploring if customer has expectations when shopping

• Learning pain points and successes for shopping in person
  

The key findings for the interview included:

• Customers need to easily access detailed product information. They need clear signage and pathways to find products and read about them.

• They feel anxious to ask an employee for assistance and don’t want to feel like a burden. One participant mentioned they feel like they have to apologize for their disability when an employee makes them feel like it’s an inconvenience to communicate through text or notepads.

• Customers do not like shopping in crowded situations or stores that are disorganized. These environments can make it harder to locate products, thus increasing the likelihood to ask an employee for assistance.

Customer survey

A survey was conducted for over 100 shoppers who are Deaf or hard of hearing to gauge whether they feel supported in retail spaces to shop on their own, in retrieving product information and if stores generally accommodate their communication needs.

Customers who are Deaf or hard of hearing were asked if stores successfully address their accessibility needs?

Customers and the market

I sought to understand the relationship between the customer and the market which is the eyewear industry. Presently, Warby Parker is a leading brand in the eyewear industry. Many glasses retailers are exclusively online without a brick and mortar location. Retail industries across the board do not have digital infrastructures in place which would support communication between employees and customers who are Deaf.

Companies who put accessibility at the forefront gain customer trust, prove themselves as reliable and improve SEO. According to Forbes, 87% of customers choose to do business with a company that advocates for issues to the interest of the customer.

Step 2: Ideate

Based on my conversations with WP employees, understanding of the employee and and customer interaction and knowledge of the POE interface, I was at a point to begin user flows. User flows were developed to test out how an employee would chat with a customer and help them find a pair of glasses. As this project was an addition to an existing product, it was important to keep the integrity of a seamless checkout experience by introducing straightforward information architecture.

User flows

Step 3: Test

Once I had established high fidelity wireframes and polished them to include iconography and messaging, it was time to test the app. I was testing to see if this chat was easy to navigate to, gauge users’ responses to the integration of this feature and if the tone of the chat felt in line with the brand.

This usability test was completed on high fidelity prototypes for Warby Parker. The screens tested were the homepage, chat feature, product page, and checkout. Three participants who have worked or currently work at Warby Parker were interviewed.

The tasks included in the test were:

• Navigate to the chat

• Chat with the customer

• Checkout the customer

Key Objectives

• Identify if users are able to complete tasks

• Test usability of chat

• Observe any difficulties users face while navigating app

Results

Successes

• 3/3 users liked the branding of the chat and homepage

• 2/3 participants mentioned adding information about contacts

• 3/3 participants successfully completed all tasks

• 3/3 participants felt this feature seamlessly integrated with the existing interface

Suggestions

• 2/3 users suggested adding an option that reads “I’m looking for contacts.”

• 1/3 users suggested changing the words on the pin to “Accessibility Friendly”