A prototype of Intelligent Stylist
Created on Figma
Make the Most of the Clothes in Your Closet.
PROBE is a smart wardrobe planner that uses an avatar to provide inspiration for everyday looks and recommends fashion products. With personalized recommendations, PROBE maximizes the use of clothes in the wardrobe and encourages the purchase of minimal but useful fashion products for every need.
My Role
Research & Interviews
Synthesis & Ideation
Brand Guide Creation
Wireframing & Prototyping
Motion Design
Date
November - December 2022
(8 weeks)
Collaborated with
Kshitija Dhumal - UX designer
Tools
Figma
Photoshop
Illustrator
After Effects
A lot of people say,
“Fashion Industries are facing environmental and social issues.“
But what exactly the issues? And what has been happening over the years?
Context and Background
-
1920
Mass Production: The sewing machine made the mass production of clothing possible. “Styles that consumed less fabric were cheaper to produce.”
-
1922
Standardized Body Image: In the U.S., only 5% of women naturally possess the body type portrayed by the media.
-
1960
Overconsumption: The average US citizen throws away 70 pounds of clothing and other textiles annually.
-
2008
Digital & Physical Image: Half of teenagers report feeling pressured to post things on social media that make them 'look good.'
-
2020
The Age of Avatar: D2A commerce - that enables brands to sell products or experience directly to consumer’s avatars.
Context and Background
Opportunities
This may seem like a lot, but we were thinking about how to tie all these problems related to clothes together and create a solution that addresses both sustainability and negative body type issues.
Problem Statement
How could we provide a smart choice of everyday looks and a smooth shopping experience to customers while reducing environmental destruction and negative body image issues?
By writing down the problem statement, I organized a hierarchy from individual needs to social impacts. The key part of the statement is owning two essentials - how we can provide benefits to individual clients while addressing the most critical environmental and negative body issues.
Research + Insights
Before jumping into research, I started to look for articles about the environmental conscious level of each generation to better understand the focus generation as a target. I also looked into the generations which would frequently do online shopping.
This research gave me a confidence that Generation Z and Millenials would be early adaptors for our products.
Although GenX has the most power to spend money GenZ and Millennials prefer online shopping more than other generations
GenZ is the generation that cares the environment the most and prioritize environmental sustainable products
Survey
Then, we conducted a street survey, targeting younger generations, and received responses from 38 individuals via a Google form. The survey, along with user interviews, helped us gain insight into the potential customers’ needs.
People believe their own experiences and their friends’ recommendations the most. Over 80% of interviewees rely on their own shopping experiences and recommendations from friends.
As well as people value discounts and deals, they also care about the quality of the product when purchasing products online.
User Interviews
❛ ❜
E-commerce needs to be more authentic. I guess I just need some real measurements and some real detail and quality check.
3 out of 5 interviewees think the detailed product information is very useful such as images, videos, reviews, and size charts to properly choose the right product. 4 out of 5 interviewees feel it is overload to search for products online. Based on these findings, I listed several key opportunities to focus on design:
Journey Map
By using a journey map, I aimed to uncover the shoppers’ painpoints during online shopping. Shoppers face difficulties in selecting clothes due to issues like Hick’s Law and uncertainty about how the clothes will look on them in different phases of the shopping journey.
Persona
We created three personas: the introverted shopper, the teenage hipster, and the busy mother.
Competitive Analysis
Simultaneously, we also took a deeper dive into researching fashion apps including recent technologies of 3D avatars, and metaverse and using the apps. This allows me to well understand the structure of existing UX / UI and think what could be needed. We were also able to benchmark our product, finding potential collaborators.
For example, exploring how to precisely measure the human body, I found AI technology using a mesh with 40,000 points using a smartphone. Combining the technology of AR, I gradually solidified the confidence that our app can provide a precise trial looks and feedback with a very close body shape of shoppers.
Wireframes
Below wireframes are the key features to solve shopper’s painpoints. Using job stories, we ideated what motivates shoppers and how to solve the problems.
Branding
For the first version, we received feedback that provided us with opportunities to rethink our branding.
After considering this feedback, I reconsidered whether the concept matched the branding. Since our product targets gender-free younger generations, we realized that the initial branding was too feminine and began to create a more simple and unisex branding. So we created the second version.
UI Elements
After rebranding, we further created UI components with detailed color, size, etc.
Prototype
Upload clothes to your digital wardrobe
This is the very first action users need to take in order to receive style recommendations. It needs to be simple and fast, so users can upload as many clothes as they have in a short amount of time. After uploading their clothes, there is a feature that allows users to quickly check the volume of clothes by category at a glance.
▲ Initial Wireframes
Engage with the Community
Users can browse through the community feed, get inspired, save looks/products, and share their looks. In the original wireframe, there was a cluster of buttons at the bottom. However, by implementing clickable icons on the bottom left, we were able to reduce the clutter and prevent accidental clicks during user interactions.
▲ Initial Wireframes
Shop Products
This e-commerce feature allows users to manually browse clothes by trends, brands, occasions, and more. It is especially useful for looking for specific clothes based on missing pieces in the user’s wardrobe. In each category, the app displays up to 9 clothes at a time, so users do not have to spend too much time searching for products. On the product information page, users can see detailed reviews about the fitting, which helps with the purchase decision.
▲ Initial Wireframes
Motion Exploration
Splash Screen
Logo
Feedback
❛ ❜
What's interesting is what I was sort of seeing this is not only being sensitive to your bill like your expenses, conserving, and reusing waste, but also adding variety based on what you have.
-Doug Geerdes, Product Designer at YouTube
Reflection + Further Steps
How can we customize personal experience?
We pick today’s look for a reason - occasion, mood, personal preference, etc. By empathizing with each individual’s reasons, the app can provide more personalized experiences as a highly professional close friend of customers.
In order to do so, I should think of more use cases including edge cases (eg: constant weight loss & gain, define more reasons to pick clothes based on weather changes, mood, living situations, etc.)
Possible Functions to add to the app
- Personal Test
- Recommendations based on closet sizes
- Integration with second-hand shops
Refine the company’s vision and narrow the focus.
Since we tried to cover a wide range of social issues, the core message was hard to be delivered to the customers.
In consideration of this, we need to stand in a position of recreating the status quo as a wardrobe planner application that invites retailers, second-hand shops, and all the individual fashion product sellers to better communicate so we all can head to the purpose of sustaining the environment while reducing the stress of each individual. As an action, we do not only collaborate with delivery and packaging services but also visualize environmental sustainability achievement to call out customers' understanding and sympathy.
I believe that the key part of spreading and strengthening the chain of understanding and sympathy is to create a cycle of customers being involved in our vision and creating value in their ways.
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