Minute Key

Designing the endless aisle interface for a key copying kiosk bringing delight during the duplication journey.

Year

Jan - March 2023

Agency

Green Stone

Project Type

UX / UI / Product

Role

Designer

Project Overview

Unlocking seamless key kiosk design

Minute Key (a.k.a. MK) has had a long term partnership with Green Stone — working on early stage industrial design of their kiosk, web design, and the kiosk interfaces. I joined the team to help evolve our original designs from years ago and improve the digital interfaces with a new look & new endless aisle shopping experience.

Problem

To compete with the offering of other key kiosks, Minute Key came to us to implement an endless aisle shopping experience.

A challenge arises with having thousands of key types and designs: the user journey becomes increasingly complex and burdensome on customer’s cognitive load.

Solution

Our main priorities were to keep the path conversion as short as possible and prioritize features with high ROI. In our design process, we looked to ways reduce the number of steps in the journey and find ways to increase average cart value.

Ultimately, our design solution led to a major reduction in time it took to checkout and in areas where time couldn’t be shortened (machine cutting keys), we added in moments of joy.

Research & Planning

Finding the key steps in our user journey

To understand the current design of the MK kiosk and its competitors, I tried out each kiosk and recorded the experience of copying a house key.

MK’s Current Experience

Competitor’s Experience

Added features

MK’s current experience is much simpler since it has less features. To stay competitive we aim to add the following functions:

01 Endless Aisle — shop from an “endless” number of key designs available in kiosk or shipped for free

02 Scan Multiple Keys — allow for multiple keys to be scanned during a single shopping session

03 Upsell — incentivize purchasing more than one key

04 Save Keys — store a digital copy of keys for emergencies or convenience

05 Buy Other Keys — purchase car keys and RFID key fobs
*solved in a separate scope*

Updated user journey

To determine where best all these features should go, I created a new user flow to document the journey intricacies.

The final user journey shown here went through many iterations as new information was revealed during design reviews with the client. Keeping this updated was crucial to our team’s organization.

Visual Design

Simplifying complexity

overview of checkout

typing in a coupon code

key scan animation

checkout animation

Outcomes & Reflection

Outcomes

Project Outcomes

We improved the key copying process and incorporated the endless aisle experience delivering designs, testable Figma prototype and voiceover script. since then, the prototype was taken to be user tested which showed a 25% reduction in time-to-purchase. Currently, these new journeys are being developed.

Learnings

It was enjoyable going to do in-person research by copying my own set of keys. Since this was the first time designing for a kiosk, there were additional challenges to consider compared to designing for a website or app. Specifically, the touch sensitivity of the screen and voiceover.

I closely collaborated with the senior visual designer to design the key selection page and animation interactions. We carefully considered the size of each element so that important pieces of information are visible on the limited real estate, but that selectable elements are easily clickable. Furthermore, the animations we designed needed to be simple as we noticed a bit of a delay with the kiosk’s display.

Designing intuitive and contextually relevant audio prompts was particularly difficult, but one of the most rewarding aspects of this project. Through collaborating with our copywriter, we carefully considered the right balance between providing informative guidance and avoiding information overload. After completing the final set of screens, we were able to refine the voiceover expereince to ensure it was seamelss and enhanced the journey.

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