TRADESIES — An app for the complexities of BC living
FOREWORD
It’s expensive living here in Vancouver. To most of us, It’s not a surprise, nor will it be changing in the foreseeable future. The simple fact is, the costs associated with a normal life in this city appear to be growing year over year, and this is leading many to take more drastic and out of the box measures when it comes to certain commodities, including one of the most often overlooked expenses — clothing.
The problem is, the posh, high end, designer clothing that most Vancouver women strive for sees someone shelling out a kidney for just one or two items; to combat this expensive conundrum we designed an app that would address this issue while also bringing new life to an overstuffed and underused wardrobe.
THE TEAM
UX- Maheen and Lindsay
UI- Mark and Ben
OVERVIEW:
- Brief
- Research
- Research Synthesis
- Ideation
- Visual Representations
- Conclusion
BRIEF
With the foreword being said, our client Danielle told us that her business model was based on the idea of clothing swaps with a craigslist twist, and wanted a platform that would rid you of unwanted clothing that stagnates in your closet. By using a credit based system, users would not be charging for their item but rather swapping these credits for other items before meeting up in a Craigslist-like fashion.
We had an opportunity to turn this idea into an app that was simplistic, open, and used its own currency. We wanted it to be very user friendly and also involve women in the nearby community.
Target Audience
Ages 19–35, Females, lots of clothes in their closet but don’t wear most of them. Majority of females!
RESEARCH
In order to conduct effective research we each decided to take on at least two interviews each. Both UI and UX members came up with a combined list of questions ranging from motivations, feelings, moods and similar experiences; Maheen and Lindsay were looking for insight into how a user would flow through the app and the necessary scope, while Ben and I were trying to locate a WHY, a reason for creating the app and user . My interviews consisted of two friends who have been involved in clothing swaps both with each other, and within their communities. When all was said and done the four of us had gathered ten total interviews and began an affinity diagram to sort the responses into different groups and sub groups.
RESEARCH SYNTHESIS
From these ten responses we were able to gather useful insight into both UI directions and UX experience. Ben and I were able to determine a WHY, as we noticed that key words like fun, casual, rejuvenating, accomplished, and satisfying came up very often. From this, we deduced that our WHY was “to rejuvenate your wardrobe without spending money.”
IDEATION
Ben and I wanted to convey two very different directions when it came to the overall design mood. We decided not to show each other these ideas, so as to not be influenced in any way. Ben followed a more geometric, stylish and sharp design; whereas I mainly followed a more elegant, wavy, soft and relaxed route.
VISUAL REPRESENTATIONS
After the ideation was all said and done, Ben and I decided the best course of action would be to take elements from each of our mood boards, rather than picking one particular design direction. Through the interview process we had all noticed that the colours blue and white had come up quite often, and our client from the very beginning had asked that we stick with a blue base colour — which of course made the choice of final colour all the more easy for us. Finding the right balance took a little playing around with, but adding just the right amount of white to a much more fun but elegant blue gave us the idea for our final colours and a simplistic and effective logo design.
Danielle wanted to keep her original logo design, but Ben decided to challenge himself. Taking an idea from one of my elements and using a stylized text design, The Tradesies “T” was created with the idea of infinite possibilities and combinations, such as swapping clothes; while the blue is very elegant, it is still fun!
When we started moving into our style tile design, I remembered that Danielle had talked about how much she liked the use of white space in our first meeting. Utilizing this, I wanted to keep things as simple and light and airy as possible.
Diving further, I wanted to play around with the button colours and the use of a textured, gradient colour scheme. I really liked the contrast of a salmon button style and played around with different hues for the different button states. As mentioned, I used a stylized font for the Tradesies title, and it something we expanded upon when Ben and I came together.
The colour scheme Ben and I decided on came together with comparative haste, we stuck with Blue navigation bars and footers and decided that our buttons would be contrasting blue with strong, bold, easily recognizable iconography. Our call to action buttons are contrasting but not overbearing, and the use of white space is also quite evident; Furthermore, our clean font is legible, relaxed, and comfortable which fits well with the brand.
CONCLUSION
This project was an eye opener, our team meshed well and we were able to get a lot done in a very short amount of time, and the hurdles we faced were small, and easily rectified. The app itself embodied what Ben and I were visualizing in a UI standpoint, and Lindsay and Maheen created a UX design that not only introduced the idea of a credit system, but also flowed through a very large filter and selling system, all while being easy to navigate.