PROJECT OVERVIEW
Stakeholder: CEO & Founder , Frederick Chieux
Role: User Experience Designer, Visual Designer
Tools: Sketch, Figma
Squad is the first Gen Z Insight, Research & Feedback solution designed specifically for Fashion & Streetwear Brands & Retailers. Members of Squad (a community of real consumers) can use this platform to willingly share who they are, what they buy, and how they feel about the fashion and streetwear brands today. Customers (brands and retailers) can then use that data submitted by the members to get insight and predict tomorrow's consumer.
The Problem
A. Gen Z Consumers (Members) have increasingly rejected traditional consumer insight methods such as surveys and polls without any incentives.
B. For Customers (Brands and retailers), fashion trends emerge quicker and die faster. There are more and more brands coming into the market and consumer’s spend basket are more diverse. How can we understand tomorrow’s fashion consumers such as which trends does she like? What brand will she buy more or less of? What products will she spend her money more or less on?
The Solution
A. Gen Z Consumers (Member/ B2C) : An application where they can earn money for uploading photos of their purchases, correctly tagging the brand and products, and sharing feedback. All while being part of a community where they can also create custom lookbooks.
B. For Customers (Brands and retailers/ (B2B): An application where they can access real time data on a member, manage their product inventory, and solicit feedback from any member or group of members
USers and Audience
The target users for the consumers’ side of the application are Gen Z consumers. By 2020, Gen Z will make up 40% of consumers. These users want rewards. They are more enthusiastic about rewards program and is more likely to participate in at least 1 loyalty program.
TEAM AND ROLE
As the sole designer for this project, I worked closely with the Stakeholder, leading and coordinating all areas of design including user research, information architecture, task flows, visual design, as well as rapid prototyping. As we move forward to the development phase, I collaborated with several developers in order to successfully ship our MVP.
DESIGN PROCESS
RESEARCH
To kickoff this project, I’ve developed a research plan for the stakeholder to have a better idea of how I will gather information and insights to better inform my design decisions and stay focused on the goals.
During this user research phase, as this product’s concept is still very new and vague to me but with the idea of this product’s main goal of uploading selfies and purchases on the application, I came up with 2 different types of users; the shoppers and the selfie takers. So I conducted interviews with targeted Gen Z users (age 16-25 ) to better understand their goals, motivations, and pain points of their shopping and social media behaviors. Here is a summary of my findings.
Personas
Using 2 of the targeted users I’ve interviewed with, I created 2 personas to better help me understand their behaviors.
Information hierarchy
Working with Fred, he has a good grasp of his vision and what features and pages he wants to incorporate into the application. He would send a creative brief of a list of deliverables to include. For me to better understand the structure, I created a site map to organize the pages and clearly list out the screens that I will need to design.
USER STORIES
In order for me to better understand what to build, for whom, why, and when - I’ve compiled some user stories based in order to prioritize and focus on the specific users and defining the features and tasks needed in order to achieve their goals.
Task Flow
With the user stories compiled, I then created a task flow for a user when they want to upload their photo in order to start earning money. Creating this helps me map out the actions needed for the users to successfully complete a task and helps me visualize the interaction with each action or screen.
Sketching
With my pen and paper, I began to sketch out ideas of the initial pages I want to design with various versions of layout and placements of content and images. I feel very comfortable starting out sketching first because it allows me to jot down different variations that I may or may not want to use for future pages.
WIREFRAMING
With my sketches, I began to digitize them to create a lo-fidelity wireframe with annotated notes to deliver to the stakeholder and receive feedbacks.
User interface design
Since there is a non-existent brand with no guidelines provided, I created the look and feel for this application from color, typography, and design system. I wanted to use colors that have a high contrast yet fun. I wanted to incorporate a cool (blue) and excitement ( bold red), with touch of femininity (pink) feel to it.
REITERATIONS
As this is still an ongoing project, there have been some changes as we want to focus on the simplicity of the MVP. In order simplify the concept, we decided to go through the feature requests and identify the key features and goals of this product. Which is simply for users to be able to upload a photo, correctly tag them, and get paid for it. Although we knew that the application could grow to be more robust, we focused on creating an MVP that meet the user’s core needs.
PROTOTYPE
FINAL THOUGHTS
This was a great experience working with Fred to have his vision come to life. If I were to re-start this project, I would definitely want to interview more people. It was a challenge getting participants for this project as I attempted contacting users through Instagram. Due to these constraints, I was only able to interview 3 persons to use in deriving my personas. Currently, this project is still in production as we move forward, I will be working with software engineers for the final handoff and implementation of my design. As this is still the very early stage of creating an MVP, it was an exciting opportunity for me to start this project from scratch and I am looking forward to where it will go in the upcoming weeks. Stay tuned!