Native tablet commerce app for pawn brokers

Company Overview

EZCORP is a leading pawn broker company with several brands of stores in North and South America. They provide short term loans typically collateral based, but they also sell inventory either forfeited from these loans or buying from customers directly. 

Problem & Goals

They needed a way to get their pawn brokers out onto the floor instead of staying behind the counter. It was common practice for the employees to stay behind the counter the majority of their shift. When reviewing the traffic in the store, it was determined there were many lost sales from customers who didn’t want to wait in line or couldn’t get the attention of the pawn brokers. Many times the line at the counter was for those making payments on their loans and layaways. It was decided to get some of the employees on the floor with tablets that could complete sales and put items on layaway.

Role

EZCORP started the project with an outside vendor, but they were working towards bringing all the design and development in-house. That’s where I came in.

In six months time, I was able to fully move the UX design decisions to the EZCORP team as the Lead UX Designer.

Tools

  • Sketch
  • Marvel
  • Zeplin
  • Jira
  • Miro
  • Lucidchart
  • Trello
  • Azure DevOps

Users

The users of the application consisted of the 7K+ pawn brokers in the pawn stores.

The tablet also allowed them to share the screen easily with the customers to help explain costs and payments.

Scope & Constraints

Development followed agile methodology utilizing two week sprints. The project had already had its first MVP release of retail sales before I started the project, and the second release adding layaway functionality happened soon after I started. 

When asking about user testing and having direct access to the pawn brokers, I was told that was not part of their process. The group mainly relied on their stakeholder for requirements and input.

Process

Fortunately I started during the week that a discovery session had been scheduled. This helped give an overview of the next goals in mind based on user feedback and company decisions. Some of the first things I was able to tackle included emailing of receipts and paying on a sale with multiple tender types.

Team

First 3 months: 2 product owners & 2 UX designers with UX director on as needed basis

Next 3 months: 2 product owners, 1 UX designer & 1 senior UX designer

Remaining time on project: 1 product owner, 1 business analyst, and 1 lead UX designer

Split tender payment

The pawn brokers relayed to the business that there was a definite need for customers to pay with more than one type of payment method. 

Research and analysis

After analyzing the percentage of transactions with multiple tender types, it was determined to focus our efforts on split payment with card and cash. There was a request to also be able to use store credit, but it was deprioritized after seeing the small number of transactions where this occurred.

After reviewing existing examples out in the wild, we looked primarily at a redesign of the Square experience for inspiration:

http://effyzhang.com/project/pos-checkout

Design
User flow

The design example we drew inspiration from unfortunately utilized a flow we were not able to replicate in the EZROAM app. Based on the architecture of the checkout process, the UX team worked with the product team to come up with a flow within those constraints.

The most common interaction pattern would be for the user to pay with one payment method, process that payment, and then go back to the checkout with a reduced balance. However, the system handoff with the vendor, FreedomPay, that processed the card payment authorizations, completed the transaction once approved. Therefore, we needed to have the user determine the amount on the card and cash before processing the card payment.

Split Tender Interactive Prototype

Scenario: Customer wants to use both a credit card and cash when paying for item

Change in Goals

Processing loan and layaway payments was always on the roadmap, however, it was deemed a higher priority after the pandemic occurred. 

User testing added!

With the help of the product owner, we were able to convince the business of the need for user testing. It proved invaluable when adding the Layaway and Loan payments functionality to the app. 

Loan Payments Interactive Prototype

Scenario: Customer needs to pay on one of their loans

Native tablet commerce app for pawn brokers was last modified: December 3rd, 2020 by admin