Summer School Retail Design @Uni Hasselt
About the Event
As part of this program, around 20 students from the FH Joanneum, the Politecnico di Milano and the University of Hasselt had the opportunity to implement a retail design project together with the cooperation partner, the local clothing brand Hympala from Hasselt, in four small groups as part of the one-week “Retail Design” course.
The course was mainly taught by Prof. Dr. Katelijn Quartier, who is an expert in retail design. Among other things, she founded the Retail Design Lab, a knowledge center at the Faculty of Architecture and Art at the University of Hasselt. Through the lab, she advises large and small retailers on how to create better and more experiential stores – including in the summer school. She was supported by her colleague Dr. Elisa Servais, also from Hasselt University, as well as Frederica Gaurnieri from Politecnico and Sigrid Bürstmayr from FH Joanneum.
Over the course of the week, we not only received exciting input on the topic of retail design, we also learned about new methods, such as the bubble plan, which are used in retail design and were then able to apply them ourselves in our small groups.
In addition to our classes, we went on several excursions. For example, one afternoon we visited the Hympala store in Hasselt, which we had to redesign as part of the summer school.
On another day, we went on a retail safari to Antwerp. Here we were able to gather inspiration in various „showcase stores“ of well-known and lesser-known brands. Like at Hympala, it was often less about the products for sale and more about giving the customer a real shopping experience. Here are a few pictures showing my personal highlights:
Outcome
The goal of the week was to redesign the store of the local streetwear store Hympala. Hympala is a young company that wants to give young people a place to meet and talk about their hobbies and style. They already have a small coffee corner, but it gets lost in the current store design. They would like to expand this corner and are also thinking about different workshop concepts that they would like to bring more into focus.
Therefore we have placed great emphasis on the Hympala workshop area and improved the general in-store-concept and the customer journey.
Our concept was based on offering young creative wear enthusiasts a space where they can meet and exchange ideas. To this end, we placed great importance on Hympala’s first impression. We digitized the shop window and created a way for customers to interact with the brand.
This „Mix&Match„-interaction gives customers the opportunity to digitally put together an outfit from all the items they can buy in the store and then try it on online. The outfit is then mapped to the customer using an AI and the customer has the option of having a Polaroid printed out of this digital outfit, sharing it online for rating in order to provide inspiration for other customers or having the outfit picked out by staff during opening hours and trying it on in real life or add them to your shopping cart on the Hympala website if the store is closed.
The outfits that are released for selection online can be rated. Once a month, the outfit of the month is chosen and is then displayed in the newly designed entrance area of the store, on the Hympala platform.
Reflection/ Key Takeaways
Impact on my Thesis
- New methods that can be applied
- Design thinking also important here, general validity
- here too, the focus during the design process is on the user
