Scan Pro
Unmasking the Hidden Costs:
Financial Impact of Return Fraud
Solo Project
2023 / 12 Weeks
UX research, UI design, Branding, Marketing
Problem Space
Return fraud poses a significant financial challenge for retailers. In leading clothing corporations, the average return rate stands at 16.5% and continues to rise annually. Shockingly, half of these returned products are fraudulent or damaged, resulting in a substantial profit loss of 1.2%.
To put this into perspective, 1.2% loss translates to a staggering $52.8 million USD for Zara owner Inditex and $72.5 million USD for Nike in the year 2022 alone.
What is return fraud?
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Challenge
How do I satisfy both companies and customers?
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Strategy
Prioritize overall customer satisfaction over simply reducing returns. Refine return policies and address frequent return reasons to create a win-win for the company, customers, and employees.
Use automation, RFID tags and machine learning to improve customer convenience and employee efficiency, addressing key user needs.
Final Product
Scan Pro is a self-returning system with simplified operations and easy directions for customers, powered by two key technologies.
Now, imagine you're a customer who came to the store to return your items. You can explore how the self-returning system works.
Step 1
- Return start
- The machine scans nearby tags
- Retrieves purchase information
Step 2
- Hang all items
- Place them in the scanner machine
- Quality inspection in progress
Step 3
- Determines eligibility
- Displays results
- Refund process
Impact
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Reflection
I started by addressing the problem from the company’s perspective, initially picturing it would be a B2B product. This led me to focus heavily on fraud prevention, aiming to design solutions to mitigate return fraud cases.
As a result, my initial design overly emphasized the "failure path", such as damage detection, while neglecting the need for a positive user experience. After three rounds of usability tests, I realized the end users were regular customers, not just fraudsters. The solution needed to provide a seamless and positive experience for the majority of users simply trying to return items.
With this insight, I revisited the problem through qualitative and quantitative research, along with usability tests. I then redesigned the system to carefully create a "successful path" that accommodates both eligible and ineligible returns while balancing user needs and company goals.
Looking back, I see opportunities for further improvement, such as streamlining the flow to reduce clicks, ensuring navigation feels intuitive and one-directional, and enhancing the visual clarity of the damaged items page.