Team: Jennifer Liu, Kim Luu, Jacky Liao
Role: Ideation, Sketching, Wire framing, Prototyping, Visual Design
Tools: Adobe XD, Adobe Photoshop
“Clothing Sales in Canada in 2015 reaches over 30 billion dollars. BC accounts for approximately 13% of total population in Canada. Thus, roughly 3.9 billion spendings in the clothing industry by consumers in BC.”
OVERVIEW
Within Facebook groups only, the numbers surpass 10,000 buyers and sellers who use the platform as a way to clear out their closets.
We wanted to create a convenient way for local fashion buyers & sellers to connect over their gently-used clothing items within a specified location radius. Our idea is to develop a clean, photo-based, user-friendly application that includes a buy/sell marketplace, personalized feeds curated through extensive search filters, an internal payment system, and a discovery section where you can shop fashion influencers’ looks directly.
THE PROBLEM
According to research done by CIRA (Canadian Internet Registration Authority), clothing is the top item consumed by Canadians when shopping online, with 42% of online shoppers making clothing purchases. We spoke to twelve frequent second-hand clothing buyers & sellers that explained they wanted a more user-friendly platform that won't clog up their newsfeed with items that are located too far for them to travel to. Sellers also didn’t want to pay the typical 60% consignment store fee.
OUR SOLUTION
Our proposed mobile application resolves the issue of displaying items to buyers that are located too far from the distance they are willing to travel by allowing the user to specify a radius of where they are willing to travel to to purchase an item. It will also allow the user to be inspired by discovering fashion influencer's outfit details with an integrated messaging function to encourage buyers and sellers to build meaningful connections through transactions.
By partnering with other clothing companies, our mobile application would serve as an advertising medium that is free to download for the user to buy and sell items with the option to upgrade to have their items be featured at the top of the Shop panel.
THE DESIGN
Using flowcharts and wireframes to communicate my ideas to my teammates, I was able to show them the relationships between each page to the next to get a sense of how the user would flow through the application. One of the challenges in this process includes differentiating between common names for the pages such as "Discover", "Feed", "Inspiration". We agreed to place a simple navigation bar with our 5 main functions for the user to easily access the pages at any time in the flow while keeping buttons and navigational aspects recognizable to the user such as the motion of scrolling down a feed and tapping the heart icon to "like" a post.
FINAL REFLECTION
I took the most out of my first hackathon experience by working with a diverse team of individuals and by communicating our ideas through different perspectives and approaches, I was able to experience the challenges of working with individuals from business/marketing and software developer backgrounds. Having to meet other hackers to form teams, meet with mentors and present to a panel of judges, we were left with 8 hours to create a pitch and prototype that posed a challenge for me as the designer to visually communicate the ideas of others under a tight time crunch (it was also my first time prototyping using Adobe XD). I learned that staying focused and be encouraging to the team helped get us through and make the most out of the experience.