The Future of Retail
Client: A category-defining tech giant
MY ROLE
Engagement lead + design lead. Led the team day to day with senior retail leadership, directing design, strategy, and creative technology; managed the early futures collaboration with IDEO.
PROJECT SCOPE
Future retail strategy across customer journeys, store models, employee roles, technology, operations, and spatial/interactive experience.
IMPACT
Created a shared vision and roadmap for how different future store models could serve distinct customer and market needs.
THE CHALLENGE
How do you design for a retail future you can see coming, but can’t yet fully define?
The company was looking ahead to a future of broader product ecosystems, more personalized customer expectations, emerging technologies, and very different market contexts. The challenge was to define what different kinds of stores should actually do in that future, and how they should feel, work, and be navigated.
We began with futuring: signals and scenarios around urbanization, health, privacy, AI, changing work, social connection, and intelligent environments. I also led field research across U.S. stores, analogous research, and interviews with internal experts to understand current behavior, friction, and emerging possibilities.
THE PROCESS
Working embedded with the retail team, I led co-creation sessions and innovation sprints across functions. We used the research to define the role of each store model, shape customer propositions and experience principles, and connect journeys to employee roles, technology, space, signage, and operations.
I translated the strategy into tangible future experiences through spatial sketches, service touchpoints, responsive signage and display ideas, interface moments, and illustrated journey vignettes.
IMPACT
The work gave teams across retail, technology, operations, people, product, and brand a shared view of the future customer and a clearer definition of how different store models could work together.
It became a North Star and roadmap for continued development: a common source of direction teams could use as technologies, products, and operating models evolved. The work continued into a follow-on phase that I helped shape and sell.