Meta DTC Store

2021 ✦ Service Design

AR and VR technologies are still in their infancy. They were seen as toys for gamers and technocrats rather than products that could forge human connections..

AKQA + Meta DTC had an opportunity to create a space to inspire discovery and shift perception of Oculus and Portal. The space was intended to help the world see how immersive experiences could fit into users’ lives.

The vision

A space that embodies Meta’s mission; a blended physical and digital environment that connects the world through the transformative power of immersion.

Design Strategist

Client: Meta (Facebook)

Project Type: Service Design

Role: Design Stategist

Duration: 12 weeks

Project stages

Stakeholder interviews

Speaking with 16 stakeholders across the Facebook organization highlighted areas of excitement, progress, challenge, and opportunity. These insights will be key considerations for creating a framework to assess best practices, and ultimately in bringing a physical space to life.

Competitive analysis

Building off of existing documentation with additional research and analysis, we looked across identified key competitors as well as a spectrum of analogous retail examples to audit the best-in-class retail experiences.

Competitive overview

Initial experience principles

The competitive and best practice review highlighted key engagement elements which are both aspirational and speak uniquely to Facebook’s DTC retail mission. These experience principles will act as a catalyst for initial territory exploration while serving to ground concepts throughout the project.

Consumer research

Primary consumer research was focused on understanding consumers’ retail engagement journeys and identifying high-level design requirements for the Facebook Store experience.

30+ interviews across 6 subsegments
15 consumers in Gamer category
15 consumers in Communicator category

Persona development

When initially working with Facebook, we were provided 2 personas: the Mainstream Gamer and the Communicator.

Our primary consumer research identified nuances to these personas and we therefore delivered updated versions of each to better fit future retail experiences.

Major insight: Retail Engagement Modes

Through primary research, three Retail Engagement Modes emerged across which both personas can engage, These modes are about behavioural modes of operating within a retail environment, and are informative for both spatial and experience design.

Developing in-store visitor journeys

In-store customer journey: storyboard

In-store service design blueprinting

Mapped consumer actions, per each persona and shopping mode, to employee actions, facilitation, and enabling systems within the store.

In-store experience concepting

Using the insights from competitive, best practice, consumer research, persona development, journey mapping, and service blueprinting, we developed the detailed concepts for in-store customer experiences.