EUNICE KIM | Product Designer
The Curated Closet
Overview
The UX design case study on the fashion mobile application that enables users to try the outfits before buying, and encourages users to join the marketplace with community buying, selling, connecting to make fashion more inclusive, diverse and less wasteful.
​
Role
UX Designer | Idea Generation, UX Research, Information Architecture, Wireframes, Prototypes
Duration
4 months, 2020
Goal
“Create an innovative digital platform that meets high consumer expectations with meaningful user experience that is both environmentally & economically resilient.”
Tools
Sketch, Photoshop
01 / The Problem
Prior to taking the UX design career track with Springboard, I worked as a designer in the fashion industry, designing watches and fashion accessories for 16 years. It was a very exciting and rewarding years until COVID outbreak. The whole world turned upside down and all the problems that were hiding beneath had accelerated on top of the surface. It was emotional and overwhelming to see so many retails shutting down, brands and companies going under bankruptcies, countless people losing jobs overnight. Today, the situation is even more dire and I was very curious to find out what the problems were behind the glamorous fashion industry and solve them to make it more resilient.
Problems Pre-COVID:
-
Offline retail has already seen massive declines in sales and traffic
-
Online retail is not keeping pace. White consumer engagement with apparel and fashion brands may be up at this time of lock down, as more consumers find themselves at home, scrolling through social media and online shops, that traffic is not translating to conversion.
-
Promotion was a needle mover, but it’s nearing its limits. The specialty-apparel and department store channels have already reached peak promotional frequency online and are difficult to differentiate offers that stand out to consumers. In such an environment, brands need to evaluate the effectiveness of different promotional offers, as there is a great risk of giving away margin, resetting customer’s value expectations, and affecting the brand's image.
-
The fashion industry’s seasonal systems have long been labeled out-of-date, broken and wasteful, with the consequences pilling up in landfills around the world. The fashion industry is the second largest polluting industry in the world.
Problems during COVID:
-
Major physical retailers have shut down
-
Billions of $$$ of clothing orders around the world have been cancelled.
-
Online sales are down 30-40% in the US. Consumer spending will continue to decline and will take time to recover.
02 / Research
Surveys & Interviews:
To understand how the consumers’ behavior changed since the Pandemic, I surveyed 20 fashion enthusiasts which I found via Instagram, professional and personal networks. From the response from the survey, I selected 6 people to interview for more insight on their shopping habits and patterns. The main questions this research meant to answer were:
-
How often do you shop for fashion items?
-
How do you feel about shopping online?
-
Have your shopping habits changed due to COVID-19?
-
How important is sustainability and social responsibilities when you’re shopping for fashion brands?
Synthesis:
After conducting surveys and interviews, I created affinity maps to synthesize their date into salient points.
Affinity Map: Interview insights
Affinity Map: Grouping emerging themes
After synthesizing the data gathered from the user interviews, it was very surprising to notice differences in shopping habits and patterns from GenZs and Millennials. It’s no secret that the fashion industry is one of the world’s most polluting industries. Lately, sustainable fashion has been gaining a lot of buzz and popularity, as global warming is on the rise and natural resources are on the decline. GenZs were shifting to thrifting and during the lockdown, they were forced to shop online and frustrated with online thrift shops. Whereas Millennials were cleaning out their closet, selling or donating clothes and buying essential new clothes online to meet their new norm lifestyles. As everyone was trying to adjust to the new norm and changing their shopping habits during the Pandemic, I was intrigued with these insights and decided to focus on both user types.
Also to support the insights, I researched the thrifting market to validate the business opportunities in used market and here are the findings:
In economic uncertainty, more consumers will "Shift to Thrift"
Resale has long been giving traditional retail a run for its money, ThredUp said. In 2019, resale grew 25 percent faster than the broader retail sector to hit $29 billion. Over the next five years, resale is projected to quintuple in market share even as traditional retail’s hold slips further. In fact, by 2029 resale will push past $80billion in value, ThredUp said, outstripping fast fashion’s projected numbers ($43 billion) for the first time.
The pandemic’s economic aftermath is only bound to accelerate this “shift to thrift,” ThredUp said, since “resale delivers value when household budgets shrink.” A GlobalData survey of 2,000 women this past April found that four in five are open to shopping secondhand when budgets tighten. Even more revealing, 79 percent of respondents said they plan to cut their clothing budgets in the next 12 months. Two in three people who have never sold their clothes are now open to it, primarily as a way to rake in some cash. Another 44 percent said they planned to buy more resale fashion in the next 12 months.
Resale helps solve Fashion Waste Crisis
As the world experiences the social, economic and health impacts of COVID-19, and the brands and companies are moving forward with sustainable sourcing, reporting and marking, I wanted to create a platform where these initiatives can be enhanced to ease consumers back into online shopping, making their experience more simple and informative of how their buying habits affect the environment.
03 / Personas
I took all the research and insights and devised two user personas with accompanying user stories (see quotes below). These personas guided me throughout the design process to ensure that I design for the users’ specific goals and needs.
Persona #1: Gen Z
Persona #2: Millennial
Targeting GenZs as sellers and buyers for the resale marketplace and Millennials as buyers of curated outfits and the users of sell back/donate features to raise the awareness of sustainability issues in the fashion industry and engage them to participate.
03 / Planning
The Challenge
After analyzing all of the research, I began to understand the project’s challenges:
-
How might we create in-store experience online?
-
How might we help users to choose the right fit and size?
-
How might we raise awareness of sustainability issues without being seen as a marketing pitch?
-
How might we make users feel a sense of community environment, sense of inclusivity in supporting sustainability?
-
How might we help curate collections in the most simple and efficient way for them to shop?
-
How might we offer seamless shipping and return with customer service?
Solution
To overcome these challenges, I needed to create an app that offers simple and convenient experiences, informative, transparent, and inspiring.
-
Able to try on the clothes before buying, plus free shipping and return
-
Offer a platform where they can connect, sell, and buy
-
Ability to shop head-to-toe looks curated for daily routines, or shop by specific items
Features of the app
​
The Curated Closet: ​
Sell back or Donate
Second Chance: resale marketplace
-
Curated looks for everyday modern essentials
-
Choose outfits or items
​​
-
Try outfits at home before buying
​​
-
Keep everything you love and send back the rest
-
Free shipping and easy return
-
Fashion marketplace where the next generation comes to discover unique items.
-
Connect with people, post live streams, videos and DMs
-
Community of people buying and selling
-
Promote sustainability in fashion
-
Send back the used items bought from The Curated Closet for cash or credit towards next outfits
-
Send back the used items from The Curated Closet for donation
04 / User Flow
User Flow 1
Red Routes for The Curated Closet users: Find styles and fit of choice without spending too much time online
User Flow 2
Red Routes for The Second Chance users: Sell or Buy used items to minimize environmental footprint and to earn extra money
I mapped out the entire flow of the red routes created for the first time users and returning users, complemented with new features.
05 / Low - Fi and Mid-Fi
As I reached the design stage, I began sketching low fidelity wireframes on paper and later digitized them in Sketch. At this point in the process, I found usability testing with Marvel to be extremely helpful to identify user’s behaviors and to find out the flow was working as planned.
Home Screen Options
Shop Screens
Check Out Options
Donate
Resale Marketplace
06 / Wireframes
>> WIRE FLOW <<
07 / UI Design Direction
I wanted the app to seem clean and modern with a classy vibe to resonate with our fashion forward users. I used lots of white space where possible, dark teal blue as a main color with gray. Since it’s a fashion app which will pick up lots of colors from the outfits, I decided not to use many colors to avoid crashing with the images of clothings. Fonts used on the app are sans-serif font (Muli and Helvetica) to emulate the brand’s high quality and sustainability-focused vision.
08 / Testing
To know if a design is worthy, it must be tested. I tested the prototype on a total of 5 people. 3 of those people were fashion-forward environmentalist GenZ's and 2 of them were fashion savvy Millennial shoppers. I gave the participants 3 tasks:
1
Goal: To check if the information on the app is sufficient and easy to follow.
Task: Explore the site and learn about what the Curated Closet is about.
Success Criteria: User is able to easily access information they’re looking for.
2
Goal:
Validate simplicity of sales enquiry process
Place an order to try at home, then return back to the Closet page to pay or return
Task:
Success Criteria:
User is able to easily place an order, return back to the app to pay or return.
3
To check if the resale marketplace and the sell back/donate features are different enough for the users
Determine if you have the information you need to want to become a seller vs. sell back to the brand.
Goal:
Task:
Success Criteria:
User is interested in the marketplace to buy and sell.
The testing showed that I needed to edit the content on the site, reorganize the hierarchy and information within the site, adjust the top navigation bar to be consistent throughout, fix the “style” page to have features as filters for a better UX.
Issue #1: Information Architecture and Navigation bar
When given the 1st task, the participants did not know what to do first. There wasn’t enough information for the first time user. To fix this, I redesigned the home screen’s hierarchy of contents that I want to feature on the home screen. Also made a hamburger menu from the “Style” page to have a drop down filtering options and kept the top navigation bar consistent throughout the whole app.
Before
After
Before
After
Issue #2: Redesign the “Resale” page with clear information
When given the 3rd task, the participants were confused with contents. There were too many images without clear direction to lead the users to where they needed to go. To fix this, I added the top content with clear direction to personalize the app with their choice of recommendations as well as advocating the importance of sustainability in fashion.
09 / Final Design
10 / Conclusion
Final Thoughts:
This was my very first UX project that I tackled from start to finish. It was very overwhelming in the beginning as there were so many problems in the fashion industry and I wanted to create a magical product that solves all the problems that can satisfy both the users needs and the business needs. During my research phase, I realized how important interviews were as I got the most valuable insights from talking to the real people with their real problems. This helped me to narrow down the problems and prioritize them. I’m pleased with the final prototype as it meets the needs of the user personas by being simple and convenient, informative, transparent, and inspiring.
Future Considerations:
Adding blogs or articles about sustainability and how the users are contributing to the health of the planet would make the app more engaging and informative.
Learnings:
Here’s what i learned after completing this project:
-
How to design a mobile app from complete scratch
-
How important it is to conduct interviews to hear the real users pain points and frustrations instead of concluding decisions on my own
-
Thrifting and sustainable fashion has a huge positive impact on the environmental health of our planet. Prior to starting this project, I didn’t know how bad the fashion industry was hurting the environment and how unethical some brands were conducting businesses. Now I will be more cautious and mindful when buying things, not only just fashion.