Nordstrom Appointment Booking
My Role
Project management & client POC
Participant recruiting and coordination
Design recommendations
About
Usability Study
Client-sponsored UW HCDE group project
Winter 2024, 10 weeks
TL;DR
The short version
Problem
Nordstrom offers complimentary services that, once discovered, effectively drive customer loyalty. However, their appointment booking flow needs improvement, and the Nordstrom team wanted to increase appointment booking discovery and reduce drop-offs.
From a study participant on the current experience: Appointment booking “feels like something they’re trying vs. something they’re doing. It feels off-brand having been a Nordstrom shopper my whole life.” - User
Solution
We uncovered 12 usability issues in our study of the beauty stylist appointment booking flow from discovery through rescheduling. Some highlights:
Users employed trial and error to find appointment booking
Search doesn’t lead to appointments, causing drop offs
Beyond brands, users expect more information on staff profiles
Users found their desired staff unavailable after selection
After several errors, people were unable to reschedule, leading to cancellations and drop offs.
Impact
After the study, our team of 5 presented findings and solutions to over 50 Nordstrom stakeholders across product, design, research, and styling. Our feedback:
“So glad to have these teams validate what we’ve been wanting for months! – UXR stakeholder
Your research is incredibly helpful and will be referenced again and again” – UXD stakeholder
Full case study below
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Let’s start from the beginning
The full story
Problem Space
Nordstrom’s free styling services drive brand loyalty.
Nordstrom’s differentiator in the market is their customer service. Through their iOS app, customers can book free consultations with beauty or wardrobe stylists. Once customers try Nordstrom services, they tend to love them, which drives customer loyalty and sales.
Problem Space
However, customers drop off while booking appointments on the iOS app.
To uncover pain points in appointment booking, our team conducted an in-person moderated usability study. Through these sessions, we tested the entire flow from discovery through rescheduling. In this phase, I led client communication, the screener survey, coordinated participant scheduling, wrote the script for, and led 60% of study sessions.
Research Findings
Users struggled to find appointment booking, encountered friction when selecting services, and were unable to reschedule their appointments.
The Solutions
Using Nordstrom’s design system and priority framework, we presented 10 solutions to a panel of 50 Nordstrom UX, product, and styling stakeholders.
Each team member owned a section (mine was service and staff selection) and I presented those recommendations along with the intro and conclusion during the stakeholder meeting.
Appointment Discovery
Findings
Users struggled to find appointments immediately and used guess-and-check methods. 2/6 failed to find the booking flow entirely.
“What might be confusing is having it under the store section. Like it’s not immediately obvious to me… It makes more sense to me to go to a page for makeup or in store service” - User
Recommendations
Condense store contact information to surface amenities and services above the scroll line. Long term, consider conducting a card sorting activity with diverse users to understand user’s mental models around information architecture.
Appointment Discovery
Findings
Despite auto-complete recommendations displaying appointment searches, results don’t bring users to appointments, which caused them to give up.
“In the search function I start with makeup appointments and it gives me a bunch of makeup, which I don’t want. So I try and search again… I’d probably give up at this point” - User
Recommendations
Include a direct path to appointments within the auto-complete and search results.
Service Selection
Findings
Service category terminology doesn’t match user’s mental model. 4/6 users reported confusion over “Beauty Expert” vs. “Beauty Floor” and 3/6 didn’t expect “In-Store Beauty Expert” to mean a professional makeup service.
“The term for each options on selecting these services is confusing, (they are) not what I look for when preparing for an event” - User
Recommendations
Add service type e.g., “Makeup Application” and A/B test copy alternatives for service cards. Additionally, restructure cards to highlight the ‘Free’ services.
Stylist Selection
Findings
6/6 participants expected to see more detailed information about staff to make informed choices and 3/6 defaulted to selecting “No Preference” due to indiscernible differences between options.
“I don’t love that I cannot really know much about these people so I don’t know who I should choose specifically” - User
Recommendations
Turning directly to the feedback from users, the recommendation adds staff bios (3/6), expertise (2/6), year of experience (2/6) and makeup portfolio/style or social media links (2/6).
Date & Time
Findings
While participants who selected “no preference” found availability, 2/3 participants found their selected staff unavailable, forcing them to return to the previous page to select a different staff member. 1/3 participants dropped off when switching staff members due to clicking the “back” arrow which exited the flow entirely.
“Unfortunate that the first stylist I selected had no dates (available) at all, it made it hard for me to know if I should even try to get a specialist” - User
Recommendations
To avoid switching between screens, consider combining staff and availability selection on the same screen.
Booking Confirmation
Findings
6/6 Participants successfully added personal information and reviewed their booking confirmation, but expected more functionality on the “Confirmation” screen. 3/6 expected to be able to edit their appointment, 3/6 expected the staff’s name, 3/6 expected calendar appt integration, and 2/6 expected precise in-store location details.
Recommendations
Add complete appointment details and include the ability to adjust the date and time directly from the confirmation screen.
Rescheduling
Findings
Users were surprised to find instructions for rescheduling were only located in the confirmation email and required a phone call to the store. Instead, 6/6 expected to see the booked appointments under ‘account’ within the app. As a workaround, 4/6 users resorted to cancelling and rebooking when tasked with rescheduling, and 2/6 gave up entirely.
“You can change your flight on Southwest… I feel like makeup [appointments] should be easier.” - User
“I do these things at 11pm at night. I’d have to put it on my calendar for the next day… that’s just a pain. I might just call Sephora at this point… cause you can just walk in.” -User
Recommendations
Consider implementing a designated space within the app (Account) to track appointments to ease rescheduling friction and support discovery.
The Results
“So glad to have these teams validate what we’ve been wanting for months!”
— Nordstrom UX Researcher
“Your research is incredibly helpful and will be referenced again and again.”
— Nordstrom UX Designer
Reflection
If I were to do this project again, I’d approach a few things differently. First, our only point of contact at Nordstrom was the UX research team. Ideally, we would’ve engaged with UX designers, product managers, and engineers throughout the process to better understand constraints and priorities and to validate our design approach.
Second, we had a (minor) mid-study crisis when one participant turned out to be actively working with Nordstrom on another usability studies project (it was wild, happy to share more offline). But because they were so familiar with the app, we classified them as an “expert” user and reported their data separately. Next time, I’d include an explicit eligibility check to keep the screener air-tight for both employees and collaborators.
Finally, getting meaningful metrics in an 11-week school project is tough, and clients usually aren’t eager to hand over a ton of proprietary data. We asked for baseline data on KPIs like task success, drop-off points, business priorities, and dev resourcing, but access was limited. Ideally, we’d have tracked metrics like completion rates or satisfaction scores. However, since this is live, I periodically check in on the booking flow to see how it’s evolved
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To wrap it up, this term was both a huge learning experience and a ton of fun. I got to flex my PM and stakeholder management skills with our client contacts and also push myself in research. I worked closely with four amazing teammates and two client contacts on ultimately what I feel was a successful project. And the best part? I can watch the app experience evolve in real time and know I may have played a small part in making it better.
:)