Zero Latency

- User Research / Service design / Customer Experience -

I was in charge of managing a VR arcade company during its initial four years of operation, in Montreal (CA).
Throughout this period, I focused on continuously enhancing our services, refining our practices, and elevating the overall
customer experience through the strategic use of service design tools.

Here is my design process and toolkit for this project :

Problems identified

💻 Online payment process
😴 Waiting time & delays between each session
🛠️ In-game technical issues
🚧 Crowds obstructing staff flow
🕹️ Customers have no reasons to stay and enjoy the venue

Service Blueprint

🗺️ A map that displays the entire process of service delivery, above and below the line of visibility, what customers can see and everything required in the back to propose an excellente experience.
(Actors are represented along the vertical axis and necessary steps to deliver the service are represented along the horizontal axis.)

Heatmap

🌡️ An essential data visualization to display services efficiency and customer interests.
I created this heatmap to help visualize attendence and heat/choke points inside the building.

✨ To constantly enhance the customer experience, we have introduced various add-on over time. The most significant addition has been the creation of a spectator area, allowing spectators to view the players in real time alongside their P.O.V on the TVs.
🔨 Leaving the GM desk door open for clients to watch others play constantly led to people lingering in the workspace (nº9 on heatmap). In order to improve user flows and customer experience, the idea was to partially remove a partition in order to open the gaming area.

🕹️🎲 Overall, people also enjoy staying and engaging in all activities provided after VR session. 🍻🪓

Persona definition

🔎📈 To better represent this broad customer base, we created personas of different ages and social classes. Subsequently, we were able to extract and analyze datas to diversify our activities, improve our services and the customer experience.

The definition of a persona, along with comparative analysis, leads us to highlight what is most important for users and to empathize with them in order to better address their needs.
🥇 Here, the focus is primarily on cutting-edge technology, the latest and thus the most immersive. Additionally, it allows for games with up to 8 players simultaneously, ideal for groups of friends or family. The objective is to maintain technological advancement to consistently stay ahead of the competition and thereby justify people returning to play at Zero Latency.

Happy path

🎬 A narrative manner to emphasize every channel, action and touchpoint during a regular customer’s journey :

The biggest pain point here is the online payment process. However, this a key aspect of our main service, with a focus on user experience.
💻 The website has been designed to be as user-friendly as possible, with an intuitive interface aimed at minimizing the time required to complete a booking, especially with regards to consider the future on-site experience.

Worst case scenario

🌋 Anticipate any problem in order to solve it as quickly as possible :

In addition to online payment, which is common across all user scenario, the biggest pain points are the extended delays between VR sessions and in-game issues. Unfortunately, the working team cannot anticipate any of these. However, we must ensure that they are resolved as quickly as possible.

🚦🚗 For the first issue, the system automatically sends users email/text reminders of their session schedule, but it's still necessary to anticipate traffic delays to the venue.

📋⏱️ As for in-game issues, the staff is trained and follows a detailed process to minimize their occurrence or, if they occur, to resolve them in no more than 2 minutes. The incidents are then documented in our database to track the status of equipment, and a support ticket is sent when necessary.

Customer experience

🗃️ Here are other persona, analysis and emotional maps :

📊 For Jess, there are two benefits: enjoy family time, while staying updated on new technologies relevant to the profession. It's a fun way to anticipate future trends and meet the evolving standards and needs of customers.

🎉 The simple discovery of a virtual world is enough to impress Fred; the effort is worthwhile, and the family activity is a resounding success. The journey back will be filled with lively discussions about the funniest moments and everyone's feelings during the game.

Impacts

📝 In addition to the presented toolkit, each user receives a satisfaction survey to fill out in order to understand their feelings and identify areas for improvement. These data are then collected and processed by the teams to offer an even better user experience.

The most notable request accepted was to modify one of our zombie games 🧟 by adding more enemies and bosses during the final phase to make it more epic. Additionally, the frequent evolution of our lounge by adding other activities shows customers that the place changes over time and constantly seeks to offer new things such as new video games 🎮, free arcades 🕹️, board games 🎲, different types of beers 🍺 at the bar, or even axe throwing 🪓 (open for barely a year).

📈💸 All these tools undoubtedly allow us to track the evolution of the company and constantly increase economic returns. Indeed, over 5 years, the company has built a loyal customer base always ready to organize company events, birthday parties, children's parties, gatherings with friends or family, etc. Moreover, the leaders are going to open a second company in 2024 close to Montreal.
📣💬 Word of mouth is at the heart of our marketing because who better than users can promote our concept? That's why it's essential to maintain a high level of professionalism to remain a leader in this industry.

🗝️😇 The key is to empathize with users, understand their needs better, and encourage them to come back to enjoy even more unique and improved experiences than before!