Project Overview
The world has changed, and everyone is trying to adapt to this new lifestyle; the new normal. COVID 19 has been a stressing experience for almost all of us, and it is quite sad to see that many people have lost joy in life and their self-confidence has dropped immensely. For some, lockdowns have gotten the worst out of them; they have forgotten how to eat healthy, how to exercise and, how to dress appropriately. Rogers & Company Ltd has decided to offer its help to tackle the issues of dressing when it comes to the workplace.
The main goals of this project are
· Help improve body image and give incentives about how to dress as per body type.
· Help employees dress better as per the skin tone and be conscious about the colour codes.
· Motivate people to buy less clothes and thus decrease fashion pollution.
·Make people dress wiser and effortlessly, thus diminishing the morning stress.
The Client and Background
Rogers & Company Ltd, directed by pioneer leaders around the Indian Ocean is a well settled with excellent reputation in the Island of Mauritius. Rogers, being founded in the year 1899, has been developing a lot of businesses and today falls among the Top 10 group of companies on the island.
This corporate company, created and distributed a plethora of services and founded multitude sub companies in various sectors, such as The FinTech, Technology, Corporate Services, Property, Leisure and Logistics. Today, the company is on of the leading companies that brings fruitful innovation across Mauritius and Africa.
The company has now over 100 workplaces with around 5000 employees. Having such a wonderful workforce, Rogers has one of the best service provider due to its exceptional workforce. One of the values of the company has been, “people first”. And they successfully achieve so. Investing in the benefits and comfort of its people has always been the company’s priority.
Now being recognised worldwide, develop more and more on its values which are: Agility, Leadership and Excellence. These three words have been ingrained in the DNA of the employees, making them more productive and keeping a healthy life along. This has been beneficial for both the employees and the company, whereby the rich and solid reputation is kept.
Challenges and Considerations
Since the company strongly believes in the potential of the human energy, their most recent campaign has been “ Uniting Energy”. The company, believeing into team spirit has been very concerned in upgrading the employees in the company, in various sectors.
Thus, the challenge for this project has been people focused. The company’s human capital sector has been managing of more the 4000 employees over proper self maintenance. The department has seen how the new comers, be it fresh graduate, interns or permanent professional, fail at keeping a good corporate grooming. The challenge here is to make the on-boarding grooming and body image sessions, seamless.
The challenge here it to provide the new comer with this design service, so as he or she does not feel blurred about the grooming facts of the company and they can eventually embark on a new professional career, with all the confidence they need.
Another factor to consider is about the sustainable projects of the company. With Rogers Foundation, the company has been putting forward massive projects and incentives to promote a sustainable living.
This one more factor about the design solution would not only help people to stress less about corporate dressing or make them have a good body image, but it will also help them to buy less. Having a good wardrobe, they will be more conscious about what they have to wear and they can adapt their plan to it, rather than just complaining about not having enough clothes which results into more buying and buying. This wardrobe conscious habit will help in decreasing fashion pollution and morning stress.
The Solution
The best way to tackle this problem, was to create a web app, that would be easily accessible to all employees. The different features and functions of the app would aim at fulfilling the goals, and also at providing the user with an engaging as well as useful experience. Lookin’ Good was the chosen name for the website, meant to help people start looking good, as its name suggest.
Design Research
To be on the right track, some case studies have been conducted so as to get a better insight of how fashion websites in general looks like, the aesthetics, as well as their different services. Among the six case studies that has been conducted are ‘The Daileigh’ and ‘Nu-in.’
1. The Daileigh
The website design is clean, looks tidy and put-together. The photographs used are also of high quality which makes everything look more sophisticated and elegant. Breathing space has been used quite well here. However, a sans-serif typeface would have been more appropriate than a serif one here. This would have reinforced the modern look of the whole website. Text alignment have also not been used and this sometimes makes the texts difficult to read. Aside from these little design troubles, the website content is very useful to anyone who wishes to dress better.
2. Nu-in
The website makes use of mostly black and white, therefore making the website look clean and timeless. In some instances, they use photographic images of their clothing to add colour in a playful way. It can also be noticed that they used some kinds of grid system to arrange the images and texts throughout the website, thus keeping everything tidy and well-organised.The typeface used is also appropriate; sans-serif bold one for big headlines, and a smaller size for body copy.The website also makes use of icons and simple illustrations to show the sustainability aspect of the brand. As for breathing space, it has also been respected. The pages is not too messy.Viewers therefore do not feel overwhelmed by the amount of information present to them.There is even a testimonial section in the home page, which is an interesting element to add to increase the amount of sales. However, in terms of text alignment, it is quite problematic in some instances, especially where texts are centered. Keeping all texts left-aligned would have kept consistency and also make the website more appealing.
Design Trends
1. Curves and Arc Shapes
This design trends focuses on distorting geometric shapes by adding arcs to them. It is an amazing style that is trending in 2021. This styles mimics the interior design styles from the 80’s where entrance and windows were design in this shape. It is a more polished version of organic shapes. It gives a sophisticated look with a touch of culture. Having the curvy shapes along with textures and texts overlapping on them plays well together.
Fitting any element inside the shape works well too. Be it texts or images, it brings the inside element into focus and adds value to it. If this design style will be used in the making of the website, it might work well, as it will give a sense of modernity, chicness and stylish. Since the theme is on fashion itself, this style might upgrade the topic in the eye of the viewer.
2. Serif fonts
Over the last few years we have definitely seen the rise of Sans serif typefaces, but the Serif fonts are making surface as well. This font style is used mainly in titles for websites and social media. We can notice a plethora of websites and creative solutions where this font is being used.
To achieve this trend, the title should be a bold serif and should be paired with a regular sans serif typeface. It creates a good stability and good visual harmony.
3. Frames
This design style has been found in various fashion website. It focuses on the use of geometry. It brings the attention on the images by adding a frame. In this style, the frame which is added has a certain level of breathing style as it does not tight up the element. It is places a bot off the edges and creates a unique balance in the noise and breathing space.
This style might be used in the creation of the website. It might be in good usage to bring attention to the element. It also focuses on the contour bias principle and projects a sense of alert. Having the shape corners, also promotes a sense of seriousness and professionalism, which might fit well to the theme.
Read Part 2 for more…
https://medium.com/@Sumayyah__/lookin-good-web-app-part-2-66666adc4b02
