I see a lot of new renovation and development in Malaysia, many of the malls are give a new facelift. Things look really nice giving them the clean Japanese retail look. Shopping and browsing seems quite nice.
I was recently in Terbrau Aeon and I really liked the new look of the mall. The layout of the mall was very interesting and they have a new food court with an interesting concept. The products sold there seemed to be of a wider variety and of a pretty good selection.
However, when I decided to purchase a product, the design of the cashiers are totally FAIL!
I waited 20 minutes for a small purchase, and I saw many customers walking off, and not completing their purchase. This is like going online, trying to buy a product, and after clicking through many pages, the checkout cart is still not completed.
There were 6 staff, but only 2 counters, the other staff seemed to be standing around and chatting for 30 minutes. When the queue grew, other shoppers were blocked from walking and there was a congestion created on a Thursday afternoon! When there is not even a lot of shoppers.
So the renovations:
Pretty (YES)
User Experience (BAD)
Going to the different levels, the mall looks really transformed. The design seemed really pretty and many of the products and display makes them attractive, however, the whole experience of buying is still very bad. Long queues, multiple queues, and inefficient staff.
Is this typical of shopping in Malaysia?
The food court. Looks really WOW and nice. The food choices seemed great, and they smell great. However when I tried buying food, it was again a miserable experience.
You queue to choose your food (with many people cutting queue), then you queue to pay for the food.
And what's worse, the food (friend food and BBQ food) seemed to be served in excessive plastic and there is no way of heating it. (A microwave was found and it was not turned on.)
When you buy a drink. You queue in one queue and collect in another queue. The queues are manned with only one person with 20 people in line, waiting for their orders which seemed to be made 2 at a time.
It was a pretty food court, but I WILL NEVER go back again. Seemed like a great layout, but much FAIL in user experience.
Perhaps they need a lesson in UX.
I hope someone goes in and work with them to fix the experience. I really like this mall, and the new design is better, but the experience is worse.
-- Robin Low
