Practice First was a future of retail micro pilot engineered and hosted by a group of C10s for Elizabeth Glenewinkel and Justin Rheinfrank’s Fall 2018 Experience Studio course. Through their research, the students discovered two primary insights – that (1) hardware stores have an opportunity to be more inclusive; many female-identifying customers felt that the male-dominated environments created an atmosphere of condescension and dismissal and (2) the knowledge transfer between customer and staff member often had a much higher value than the actual financial transaction; a customer can enter the store with a problem and leave with $1 product and a solution. However, this can lead to more questions, which prompted our plan for users to get hands on experience in a single visit. With these insights, the team identified and combined two opportunities – “How might we create a hardware experience that’s inclusive to audiences outside of the category’s ‘norm’?” and “How might we transform the hardware store into a place of learning?” With these goals in mind we designed an experience where we could invite all people into a welcoming, multi-sensory environment in order to practice an essential home improvement technique. The technique the users practiced was setting a drywall anchor into a real sheet of drywall and was the crux of the micro pilot experiment – Would users engage with the practice wall? This exercise represented one of several tutorials that would be sold through the pop-up’s digital platform, which was an iPad carried by a brand ambassador who would ask the user to sign up after they had finished their turn on the practice wall. The team tested for conversion via signups to the newsletter. Of the 19 people who ran through our experience, 17 signed up to have the instructions sent to them. Of those 17, 14 signed up for the newsletter with information on future classes.