Retail Demo Experience
Transforming how shoppers discover, evaluate, and choose Windows PCs across 7,000+ retail stores worldwide.
Team
Jeremy Cimafonte
Services
Design
Date
2025
— 2026
Overview
Microsoft RDX (Retail Demo Experience) is the software platform that runs on every Windows demo PC in retail stores worldwide. It is the first thing a shopper sees when they approach a laptop at Best Buy, MediaMarkt, FNAC, or retailers worldwide. This redesign was a ground-up reimagining of that shopper-facing experience: replacing a legacy content player with a purposeful, guided journey that turns choice overload into purchase confidence.
I served as Senior Product Designer, responsible for the end-to-end UX of the new on-device retail experience. From the attract loop that catches a shopper’s eye to the hands-on test drives that seal the deal.
25K+
Retail Stores
210K+
Active Devices
30+
OEM & Retail Partners
The Challenge
75% of shoppers research PCs online before stepping into a store. They’ve read reviews, compared specs, and narrowed it down to two or three models. Now they’re standing in front of a row of open laptops, ready to commit. This is the most valuable moment in the entire purchase journey.
And we were wasting it.
The existing RDX experience had evolved into a passive carousel of rotating marketing slides disconnected from the shopper’s real question (“Is this the right one for me?”) and overloaded with information that didn’t drive decisions. Retail associates worked around the demo experience, not with it. The result: confused shoppers, missed conversions, and 350K+ devices across 7,000+ stores that weren’t earning their shelf space.
Designed for Discovery, Not Decision
Shoppers come in-store to decide, not browse. But the experience added noise when they needed clarity. Research showed it took 3+ walk-throughs to understand how devices were organized.
A Passive, One-Size-Fits-All Experience
The same rotating slides played on every device regardless of collection, price point, or intent. A $599 student laptop and a $2,400 creator workstation told the same story.
Specs Without Context
The information that mattered most was the hardest to understand. Raw technical jargon with no explanation of what it meant for a shopper's purchase decision.
Invisible Test Drives
Hands-on demos existed but were buried in a separate section. The most persuasive evidence needed to be front and center when evaluating a device.
No Easy Way to Compare
Shoppers standing between two devices could compare them side by side, but weren't sure which was the clear winner. A missed opportunity at the most critical moment in the purchase journey.
Partner Complexity at Scale
24+ OEM brands, 150+ retailers, 7,000+ stores, 350K+ devices, all relying on their own content that didn't meaningfully drive purchasing decisions but came at a huge cost.
Research & Discovery
Before designing anything, I needed to understand what was actually happening at the point of interaction. I led a multi-method research effort that combined in-store observation with stakeholder interviews and competitive analysis.
Retail Audits & Shop-Alongs: On-site visits to partner retail locations (walking the floor with shoppers and retail associates) surfaced the real friction points. Demo content was often stale or irrelevant. Shoppers would glance at a screen, get nothing useful, and move on. Associates had no tools to guide the conversation beyond their own product knowledge.
Manifesto & Vision Alignment: I contributed to the RDX Manifesto, an internal strategy document that reframed the platform’s purpose: from a content player to “the operating system of retail intent.” This established three core principles (Clarity over Clutter, Truth over Tactic, Guidance over Guesswork) that became the design’s north star.
Shopper Journey Mapping: I mapped a ten-stage shopper journey from the moment they approach a device to the moment they make a purchase decision: Attract Loop → Presence Wake → Home Preview → Explore Features → Specifications → Compare → Test Drive → Call Associate → Configure → Purchase. Each stage had distinct information needs and interaction patterns that the design needed to support.
The shopper’s core question is simple: “Is this the right device for me, right now?” Everything in the experience needed to help answer that question faster and with more confidence or get out of the way.
Design Process
The old experience dumped everything onto a single rotating carousel. The new experience is built around progressive disclosure; giving shoppers control over how deep they go, and meeting them at every stage of their decision.
Unified Device Experience
Rather than showing different layouts and content for each device, I designed a unified experience. The home screen shows just enough (device name, collection, price, hero image, and four key specs) with a floating tab bar for deeper exploration into features, specs, and test drives. Hover reveals meaning; click is commitment. Nothing overwhelms.
Surfacing Test Drives Where They Matter
Test drives existed in the old experience but were buried in a separate section. Shoppers have already done their research and are looking to test the device and understand relevant context, not to scroll through marketing content. Each tab opens a focused, single-story feature page. Pages are OEM-customizable (brands provide their own headline, image, and copy), while the demo layout remains consistent across all partners.
Turning jargon into a decision tool
Hovering over a feature on the home screen or a page displays a tooltip with a plain-language explanation, ideal use cases, and a link to the full specs and comparison.
Specs, Compare & Decision Tools
I redesigned the spec sheet so that hovering any spec reveals a plain-language explanation of what it means for the shopper. The Compare view places two devices side by side, with filter chips (Performance, Portability, Design) that dynamically highlight the most relevant specs and recommend the best-fit device.
Impact
Project Rise replaced a passive marketing slideshow with an active decision-support platform—the first fundamental redesign of the shopper-facing experience in RDX’s history.
Marketing Carousel → Unified Hub
Device-specific rotating slides have been replaced with a unified collection-driven experience where shoppers can explore to quickly determine which device fits their needs.
Integrated Test Drives
Test drives buried in a separate section are now embedded directly on each feature page so shoppers explore them naturally as they explore the device.
Jargon → Plain Language
Raw spec lists replaced with contextual tooltips that translate specifications into benefits shoppers actually understand—turning the spec sheet into a decision tool.
Simplified Comparison
Confusing comparison replaced with a side-by-side Compare view with priority-based filtering, helping shoppers quickly determine which device is right for them.
Learnings
Designing for the physical world changes everything. This wasn’t a website or mobile app—it was software on a retail floor, used by strangers standing up, often with one hand, in a noisy environment, for maybe 60 seconds. Every interaction had to be glanceable, forgiving, and immediately rewarding. The luxury of onboarding or second chances doesn’t exist at the shelf.
Multi-stakeholder design requires governance, not just a style guide. With OEMs wanting brand prominence, silicon partners wanting processor visibility, retailers wanting store-level customization, and Microsoft wanting consistency, the hardest work was designing the rules for what shows up and when. The content authority wasn’t a strategy document—it was a design decision that shaped every screen.
The best demo is the device itself. The test drives already existed—but nobody could find them. Pulling them out of a buried section and embedding them directly into each feature page was the single biggest unlock. Instead of hoping shoppers would navigate to a separate area, we put the typing test on the keyboard page and calibrated video on the display page. The shift from hiding to surfacing changed everything.
