Fit'd App
Research
UX/UI
Branding
Prototyping
Usability Testing
Fit’d is a digital wardrobe app designed to help young adults organize and curate their real-life closets, and explore their personal style. Its features include optimized wardrobe organization, a streamlined process for uploading clothing items, an outfit and look book creator, and a virtual dressing room where users can try on their outfits.
My Role
End-to-End UX Researcher and UX/UI Designer
Timeline
October 2024 - November 2024
(6 weeks)
*Working at a part-time schedule
Tools
Figma, Miro, Procreate, Lyssna, Illustrator, Photoshop
An easy way to curate your closet, fit just for you
Problem
Choosing what to wear can be daunting for various reasons. People might be struggling to find their personal style, ran out of ideas on how to combine their clothes to create new outfits, or might not have time to do so. Sometimes limited closet space can also serve as an obstacle for people to easily view and organize their items, and this negatively impacts people's ability to put together outfits faster, and the possibility of using more of their clothes. There is an opportunity to help young people with limited closet space better organize their wardrobes, increase visibility of their items, and provide quicker ways to put together outfits.
01. Discovery
Background
In today's consumerist culture, the commercial mass production of clothing and ever changing fashion trends have made it increasingly common for the average person to accumulate large quantities of clothing. This has resulted in people owning more clothes than they can wear and store, typically, in hopes of keeping up with trends. With constant flooding of social media content about aesthetics and fashion trends, it has become difficult for young adults to find their unique style.
There are currently some apps for creating clothes databases that help users put together outfits and keep track of their closets. However, users feel the UI can be difficult to navigate and can be unreliable when saving their data. They are also not very pleased with their outfit generator features and how the apps do not properly recognize the clothing items they upload. The demand for easy-to-use and reliable wardrobe digitizing and outfit planning apps highlights an opportunity provide a personalized experience for users.
Fit'd started by talking with people about their experience with fashion and clothing.
Research
In the research stage of this project, it was important to directly talk with potential users to dive deeper into their experiences with organizing/curating their closets and any constraints they might be facing when putting outfits together. Through conversations with potential users, I discovered that limited closet space and the loss of visibility of items contributes to forgetfulness, which leads to repurchasing items or the lack of usage of items owned. My secondary research helped confirm this as a common issue and identify nuances. The competitive analysis helped me understand the make up of the competition and any gaps in the market.
Preliminary User Survey
The first step was to conduct a survey with questions focused on identifying common pain points within young adults living in NYC. This helped me narrow down the subject of closet organization and user's relationship to clothes.
Closet Organization
Most people struggle with the upkeep of a well-organized closet due to time and spatial constraints.
Seeing In Doubles
People often forget they own pieces of clothing due to lack of visibility and repurchasing similar items.
Creative Slump
Creating new outfit combinations can be difficult when people feel tired of their clothes and don't have enough time to explore options.
Identifying Gaps and Opportunities in the Market
With the survey results in mind, I looked into existing products that offered services for similar problems. This secondary research helped me see what features competitors offer their users, how their users are reviewing their features, and their overall UX/UI design. This would help me identify opportunities for Fit'd to stand out.
Direct Competitors
Indyx, Stylebook, OpenWardrobe, Acloset and Whering: These five platforms were the most popular for creating a digital wardrobe. While they all had unique UI designs, their structure and features overlapped. All offer users a single way to upload items to their wardrobe, by taking a photo of the item and inputing its information. The products also offered outfit creator tools, some were manual (by creating collages with item photos), others had an integrated AI generator that produced random results. Most of these apps also had a social component to them, users can follow and share their wardrobes with others.
While these products provide the basic tools for digital closet organization and some added features, users still had very valid concerns. Users find the process of adding items a very tedious process that requires a lot of time, effort and commitment. Because of how arduous it is, users have have worries of losing their data and some actually have. Many others disliked the AI outfit generators because most of the time it produces incompatible combinations.
Indirect Competitor
Pinterest: Looking into this platform was important since it's the most popular place for finding inspiration, including fashion. People commonly use Pinterest to create fashion inspiration boards, explore aesthetics, create outfits with the collage feature, and follow friends and/or influencers. While many users enjoy the app for its features and simple UI, many are unhappy with how its shop feature's advertisements have seemingly overpowered pins posted by users.
Opportunities
Through this research I was able to identify gaps in the market for a faster way to upload clothes to a digital wardrobe, emphasize clothing visibility, and to find a more playful and personalized approach into outfit creation and try on process.
User Interviews
I spoke with five young adults in their late 20s from NYC interested in fashion. Four of the participants are young professionals and 1 is a stay at home mother. Four of the interviews were conducted through video calls and the other one was done in person.
On these interviews I was able to listen to users experiences with fashion and its role in their lives. Many users had never used a digital wardrobe app, so my questions focused more on their relationship with clothes, how they put together outfits, their ways to organize their closets and perspective on sustainability in fashion.
Key Insights from affinity mapping
Fashion's Role in my Life
Many participants saw fashion and clothing as a social outlet. Complimenting someone's outfit or style is a common conversation starter and going shopping with friends becomes a social activity. One participant also commented how fashion played a big role in cultural activities at her home country.
Inspiration Sources
The four most common sources to find fashion inspiration were social media, TV, other people, and clothing store apps. People said that seeing how items look on others (whether on the sidewalk, an influencer, or how a model was styled in a clothing store app) inspires them to try new things and explore their personal style.
Planning Outfits
Participants said that they usually plan outfits ahead if they are going to a special event others plan in their head when they don't have time. Other common strategies were to build outfits around an item or based on the weather. People also said that they plan work outfits the night before to save time in the mornings.
Getting Dressed Struggles
Participants said they struggle with not liking how an item looks on them; when they envision an outfit, try it on and it's not what they imagined. Many mentioned how sometimes they will change their outfit a few times before deciding on one they like. Others said they struggled with pairing colors and patterns.
Closet Organization
Many participants said they struggled with maintaining their closets organized because they did not have much space. Some said that for each season they reorganize their clothes by type and colors, but they inevitably end up shuffled as the days go by. Participants also noted their ideal closet would be one where every item is visible to them.
How much clothes do I own?
Most participants said they own "too many" clothes and struggle with storage. Due to limited closet space, they put clothes away in places that are not readily visible, causing users to often forget what they own. Some said they purchase clothes frequently and others said they do not but have accumulated clothes over the years.
Sustainability
Participants said they try to be more sustainable by not purchasing impulsively and donating clothes. Some said they would like to start thrifting or looking into renting clothes.
User Personas
Based on my learnings so far, I developed two user personas: Sophie, a busy, young professional living in NYC who is searching to define her personal style by exploring new ways to style her clothes. There's also Ana, a fashion lover looking to organize her overcrowded closet in a time efficient way.
02. Define
How might we improve the process of digitizing a wardrobe for young people who want to have visual access to all their clothes so that they can more efficiently put together outfits, explore their style and reduce/expand their collection?
Site Map
I started materializing ideas by creating an initial site map outlining the structure of the app. Here I defined key pages and features for the product.
User Flows
With a clear understanding of what the app might look like, I delved deeper into outlining essential user flows for the product’s performance.
03. Ideate
Sketching Design Ideas
After designing the architecture of the site and identifying the most important flows, I finally started to draw what these screens would look like for the main pages and two user flows; adding an item to the user's wardrobe and creating an account with the avatar.
Mid-Fi Wireframes
After sketching the main screens, I moved onto digitalizing them, refining them and making any additional needed screens.
04. UI
Branding
Name and Logo
The name I chose for the app is Fit'd like “fitted” and “fit,” which is short for outfit. “Fitted” speaks to how the app is meant to be personalized by the user by creating their own digital wardrobes and how they can customize an avatar to look like themselves and try on outfits. The app is fit'd to the user.
It was important for the user's experience to be a fun, enjoyable one, so I designed a logo that would capture that.
Logo explorations
Final iteration
Color Palette, Typeface & UI Library
I focused on using bright colors to appear friendly to users, but used them strategically to not take away from the clothing items users will be uploading. For the typeface, I wanted it to be minimalist and clean, but feel friendly and familiar.
Designing the Avatar
One of the big features of this app is the customization of an avatar, so I designed a simple kit of parts for it. The avatar was done in Illustrator and the background for the dressing room was AI generated.
05. Prototype
Hi-Fi Wireframes and Prototype
After developing the product's branding, it was time to create refined versions of the wireframes and seamlessly integrate all the colors and elements from the UI library.
Once I had designed all the necessary screens, I proceeded to create a prototype of the product with four main task flows that would be tested.
06. Validate
Usability Testing
The goal was to test how smooth or difficult, and how long participants take to complete a task. I also wanted to know how they felt about the UI design. The test results were used to further develop the task flows and prototype.
The usability tests were conducted asynchronously with 5 participants.
1
Create an account and avatar
2
Log in and add an item to the wardrobe by taking a photo
3
Add an item to wardrobe from email
4
Create an outfit
Overall, participants were pleased with the design/aesthetic and thought the app was easy to navigate and the feature were useful.
Suggestions
Some participants had suggestions that benefitted and helped further articulate the product. They can be seen implemented in these screens below.
Learnings and Next Steps
There are many opportunities to continue developing this app. Since the current design is an MVP, there were some intended features that I was not able to design fully, such as the dressing room. Other features that would come in later versions of the product would be the wardrobe analytics page, the outfit planner calendar, the cost per wear for items, and adding a social aspect to the product where users can follow each other and share their outfits to inspire each other and build a community.
