Re-style: Our journey
At the Digital Creativity lab we were asked to think of a unique start-up idea and later on developing it into a mobile application and a website. Re-style was our unique idea. While in the process of developing the idea our main aim was to create a platform where users would navigate easily, fast and with safety. However the creation of the two platforms was not easy.
That is when we used the valuable information Maggy Kontou gave us during a session in class. The first step was to understand what our service offers to users, and so did we! ‘’OUR RE-STYLE APP AND SITE HELPS EVERY FASHION LOVER WHO WANTS TO MAKE HIS/HERS OLD CLOTHES LOOK BRAND NEW BY THE HELP OF FASHION DESIGNERS WITHIN REASONALBE PRICES.’’ Moving on we had to design the way the application and the site would work and the best way to do it is to be the user. This means that we had to create each action and interaction based on what a real life user would do with the app and site in his hands. Following this rule we had our plan ready and it was time to start the prototyping.
When we first saw the website (Tilda) we thought that things would be a little bit easier as the site already provided us with some templates, so all we had to do was to choose one and then work from there. However, that was at the same time an obstacle as it created some restrictions on the things that we could design using this platform and it made us try a lot of different things untill creating what we wished for.
On the other hand the application (Proto.io) was offering just a blank page. That again was an obstacle, because we needed to create everything from nothing, but at the same time it gave us the freedom of bringing to life anything we had in our minds with no restrictions. At this point of our project all members faced the difficulty of working with two unknown programs and the struggle was real. We managed to overcome this obstacle with research and practice.
Protoio was a great tool to create our prototype as it offered a wide variety of options. Re-style app is definitely minimalist because the clothes are those that need to be seen. The colors that we choose were black, white, grey and red. Black, white and grey are colors that do not confuse the eye while red was in our logo so it had to be a part of the color scheme. For the design of the app we used the heuristics as presented by the UX Prodigy. We implemented with success the principles of intuitive , efficiency, relevance and visibility as our app is very easy to use , you can not be lost during navigation, the process of ordering is extremely easy and everything is clear and understandable. The way the app is written is a user friendly language. The Heuristics #4: Consistency and standards are visible all over the app as we used the cart on the top on the right as it is used to be seen on e-shops and also the arrows that move you to the previous visited page.
Watch this video to understand how easy re-style app works.
Working with UX really helped us accomplish our goal of providing a good user experience for our website. We followed all 10 heuristics they shared with us and tried to implement all of them in our final product. We primarily focused on making our website content as effortlessly accessible as we could, making all content only 2 clicks away from the visitor. The design of our website followed the same principles and guidelines making getting back to the home page only 1 click away (clicking on the logo) and having the map and content list along with the privacy policies at the bottom of the page. In the spirit of a great customer experience we also tried to always have the side content list always visible by following the users scrolling and visualized loading time to the users for each of their selections. In conclusion, we consider ourselves lucky to have worked and learned from the UX team. We share the same principles and their coaching helped us design a product that we as users would be happy to use.
What challenged us at Proto.io and Tilda was the fact that they did not offer the option of automatic price addition at the end of the order and that is why we had to add a price per cloth. Another difficulty we faced with Tilda was the add to cart option, which was impossible for us to make it work even after all the efforts we did.
If you want to visit our website click here.
For us, this journey was something magical. It all started as a task that was assigned to us and it turned out to a fun hobby with which we consciously filled our days. It wasn’t easy as none of us had done something like this before. We worked a lot on this project, though, and hard work always pays off. This would be the advice that we would give to someone who is about to start the same journey that we did. To work hard. Not individually, but collectively. To never be afraid of sharing his thoughts and mostly to always listen to what others have to suggest. And if something goes wrong, one must not be disappointed but to dig in. First of all, though, whatever he does, he must do it with joy. Not because he has to. Because, everything is quite more obvious when you love what you do. And that’s the only key to success.
The truth is that in this journey we weren’t on our own, Athens Fashion Club was the organization we asked to support us and create a partnership with us. In order to comfort our users we wanted fashion experts to work on their clothes and create their one in a million piece! Athens Fashion Club is a wide known fashion school and also interested in start up actions in order to learn more about them and how we approached them and finally got the chance to actually work with them click here.
Here you can visit our pages on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and our Site.
You can, also, check our previous post that explains how… all started here.
Betty Tsakarestou Dr. Stavros Kaperonis Arviola Skempi Elisavet Kyriazis Μεγκυ Μλ. Ηλέκτρα Ξανθοπουλου Ευαγγελία Ζήση Georgia Staikou
