Retail Design Tools: An Omnichannel Retail Design Process Conceptualisation

The new directions in retail experience design raise questions about which tools need to be integrated into the retail experience design process. Being a highly transformational field, the competence domains involved in the retail system are multiple and constantly redefined their roles, hierarchies and intervention models (Cheetham & Chivers, 1996; Iannilli et al., 2019; Quartier et al., 2020). The complex intertwining demands that require not only spatial design skills but also marketing, strategy, branding, communication, service, management, omnichannel and digital converge within a system that requires transdisciplinarity, which, as already discussed in the previous paragraph, can be fuelled by design tools integrated into the design process. In this context, a reflection on the omnichannel retail design process and on the tools that are being used during its phases is presented in this work, with the intent to map the state of the art and come to a conceptualisation of the process and tools for a better understanding of the current retail design framework and its pain points and spaces for the evolution of the contemporary omnichannel transdisciplinary retail design process.