Product Manager
UX/UI Designer
UX Researcher
Figma
Illustrator
Photoshop
3 UX Researchers
2 UX/UI Designers
Independent designers struggle to gain visibility in a saturated market because they often lack the marketing resource and brand recognition that well-established designers have.
of new brands fail in the first five years from lack of visibility
of fashion shoppers rely on visual platforms for inspiration
of online shoppers are more likely to purchase from curated recommendations
How can we help independent designers get noticed to increase their visibility?
An app that helps independent designers get noticed with personalized recommendations and mood boards to showcase their work.
To first understand the current fashion ecosystem, we analyzed competitors using a SWOT analysis and organized our findings into Affinity Maps, HMWs, and POV statements to define our problem statement.
"Independent designers struggle to gain visibility in a saturated market because they often lack the marketing resources and brand recognition that well-established designers have."
But, we still wanted to see if this matched the needs of real-world designers, so we interviewed five independent designers to confirm their challenges.
After confirming their challenges, we then consolidated them into a persona so we could pinpoint how our solution could fit in.
A self-taught designer that struggles with marketing her brand.
Expand reach organically without heavy marketing investment.
Struggles with visibility in a crowded market without paid ads.
Cost-effective ways to increase brand exposure and attract customers.
Seeing their designs resonate with a loyal audience.
Relies on social media and word-of-mouth for organic growth.
It's hard to get noticed.
Current platforms lack personalization.
The market is over saturated.
It’s difficult to trust smaller brands.
Enhanced visibility through a featured page.
Ability to customize lookbooks through mood boards.
Recommendations that introduces designers.
Recognition building through a follower base.
In order to ensure a delivery that solves our problem, we deduced our offerings into two core solutions to maintain focus on the root issue rather than introducing scattered functionality that only addresses symptoms.
Lack of visibility
Personalized recommendations
Customizable moodboards
By building off our two core solutions, we developed a user flow to explore their functionality in real-world scenarios, with our persona in mind.
For better visualization, we translated our user journey map into low fidelity wireframes. After a team critique using heuristic analysis, we then moved onto hi-fidelity wireframes.
Introduces users to the app’s purpose.
Helps users create look books and shop for clothing based on their style and interests.
Uses AI to find and recommend visually similar clothing for easy browsing and shopping.
Allows users to buy and sell clothing through independent seller profiles.
To ensure readability, we chose Satoshi to maintain a clean and modern feel. For the entire design, we utilized a 4-column, 20-margin, 10-gutter grid system.
For consistency and scalability, we built a reusable component library.
Using self-reported scores, we conducted 3 user tests to validate the functionality of these features of their ease of use. Here were the key questions we asked:
"On a scale of 1-5, how interested would you be in using an AI tool that finds similar products based on an image you click?"
"On a scale of 1-5, how useful would creating a moodboard be in organizing and discovering products?"
"On a scale of 1-5, how appealing would personalized product recommendations be based on your preferences or moodboards?"
"On a scale of 1-5, how likely are you to return and use this tool again?"
all users would be interested in using AI tool to find similar products.
two out of three users found moodboarding useful.
all users would be appealed to personalized recommendations.
two out of three users rated highly on using all tools on the app.
Clear user needs lead to better solutions – Identifying pain points early helped me design features that truly support independent designers.
Focus prevents unnecessary complexity – We narrowed our offerings to two core solutions to solve the root problem rather than just its symptoms to remain grounded in our goals.
Testing improves usability – User feedback was key to refining recommendations and moodboards in giving me new perspectives that I haven't predicted before.
