TAILORED
A mobile app that facilitates the tailoring process by connecting you with tailors in the city -customized to your needs -reduces the physical visits to the tailors and saves a lot of time and money.
It also advocates and inspires a more sustainable lifestyle for treating and reusing our clothes.
Project Overview
Tailor shops , especially for a more specific alteration project, is not always easy to find.
Having to go personally to the tailor shop a couple of times for an alteration takes a lot of time and effort.
Big cities provide a plethora of options that is sometimes hard to choose the right professional.
The problem:
Design a reliable app that will provide tailored services online.
Connect tailors with potential customers.
Suggest a sustainable way of treating clothes.
The goal:
First project as a UX Designer.
Project app idea and research.
Wireframing, prototyping and testing.
My role:
Time:
8 weeks.
1. DEFINE
1.1 How the project idea started
The idea for this project began when I noticed frequent complaints within my network about how challenging it was to find reliable tailors, often preferring to buy new clothes instead of repairing their existing ones.
This sparked my curiosity and as I explored further on Instagram, many creative profiles modified their clothes, yet still struggling with tailor interactions.
Additionally, learning about the circular economy inspired me to develop an app that aligns with the mentioned needs and my beliefs.
1.2 What are the Pain Points
In order to have a cloth fixed, people have to go more than twice to a tailor shop.
Distance
Finding a reliable tailor in a big city is a hard and time consuming task.
Reliability
Excessive clothing waste has become a major issue today, driven by the overconsumption mindset that many people have adopted.
Sustainability Absence
People have old clothes to their wardrobe that they would like to alter but do not know how.
Lack of Inspiration
1.3 Who might benefit from the app
My main target group of potential users is people with busy schedules, living in big metropolitan cities where there’s a plethora of options but difficulty in distinguishing the best option customized to your needs. Sustainability consciousness is another basic motive in order to use Tailored.
Convenience: It is crucial for users who want a service that simplifies and optimises the tailoring process.
Quality and Reliability: Users want to find a reliable tailor with whom they can trust their clothes and feel reassured that the quality of their services will be professional and accurate.
Sustainability focus: Users are interested in extending the life of their clothes rather than purchasing new items, reflecting a commitment to reducing waste and promoting a sustainable lifestyle.
Core Needs
Limited time for personal errands.
Difficulty finding a reliable and conveniently located tailor.
Concerned about the throwaway culture in fashion industry.
Inconsistency in pricing of tailoring services.
Key Frustrations
1.4 Why an online service is needed
Following a traditional user journey map of altering a cloth based on one of my created personas, highlighted gaps and pain points that could potentially be solved by the existence of an online service. Tracing the usual tailoring service validated the idea and created a clear picture of the main features and steps I needed to focus on first.
1.5 What are the learnings from observing similar products - competition analysis
Competitor research revealed key aspects to consider for Tailored's development. While there are few direct competitors, like the successful SOJO app in London, they offer a complete process and concept. Insights from indirect competitors, such as Uber, were also valuable due to the similar user flow and UX process, despite the difference in services—clothing repair in my case.
2. IDEATE
2.1 Brainstorming/Paper Wireframes
To ensure users have a smooth interaction and trust the product enough to enter payment details and place orders, I initially outlined key features. These later evolved into detailed paper wireframes and user flow diagrams, refining the tailoring process.
2.1 Setting up the basic User Flow
The main userflow is based on an ‘order-online’ app that has a very specific flow and endpoint. I just had to find how it will be adjusted to the tailoring process.
Having said that, sorting out the order of the main screens was relatively straightforward to me, however, deciding on the secondary screens about their index and position in the main user flow proved to be more challenging.
2.3 Low-fidelity Prototypes
Setting up the main Wireframe Designs and User Interaction flow
2.4 Usability testing Findings | Design Iteration
I conducted an unmoderated usability study with a small, diverse group from my network, testing a basic user flow prototype. The feedback highlighted ambiguous information architecture, leading to multiple text revisions and screen reduction to streamline the process. The most significant change was a complete redefinition of the costing procedure.
Screen Combination - Call to action steps reduced
Costing - Made costing uniform and standard, instead of cost estimation, improved the order guidelines inputs.
You can have a further look of the first Usability Testing I conducted here:
3. PROTOTYPE
3.1 How it Works
3.2 Mock-ups
3.3 High Fidelity Prototype
Process1 - Choosing service and tailor:
Login, find the item you want to fix, give more specific details about the tailoring process you want to do, select the tailor to conduct this work.
Process 2 - Delivery details:
Choose the way your item will reach at the hands of the tailor, add your preferred method of payment, check once again the summary of the order, confirm or change and continue tracking the whole process through the app.
4. TAKEAWAYS
4.1 What I learned
This project is my first step into UX design, an eye-opening and detailed learning journey. Along the way, I've picked up a wide range of skills, from technical knowledge to the sensibility required to interpret and respond to feedback from usability tests.
Furthermore, I've grasped the importance of organizing my work effectively, ensuring that my initial project is easy to understand and comprehensive, giving an insightful idea of my learning and way of thinking.
Additionally, my experience in Architecture facilitated the design process a lot, by feeling comfortable with iterating many times before producing a final design, handling different levels of information and how to present it, and becoming quickly familiar with learning and using new software.
4.2 Challenges
Costing.
The app's challenge is calculating the cost for each order, as tailoring requests vary in complexity based on fabric, fit, etc. Initially, I designed it as a cost estimation, with the final price sent by the tailor for the customer to accept or reject. However, after usability testing, this approach seemed unclear and unreliable to most users, so I decided to standardize it. More testing would be needed if this were a real project.
Payment.
This relates to the previous issue. I initially included a payment method screen where users would be charged only after accepting a tailor's final cost proposal. However, usability testing showed this step was unclear and untrustworthy, as users were unwilling to provide payment details without knowing the amount or timing of the charge.
4.3 Going Forward
MVP Strategy
Purpose
With the intention to validate if this product would fill a gap in the market of a big metropolitan city, it would be good to produce a minimum version of the user flow presented. So in order to develop an MVP version of the product and make a soft launch these are the points to focus:
Features to include:
Select a single city for a tailored research approach, considering its unique behaviors, needs, and culture.
Partner with a select few tailors.
Offer a limited set of tailoring services.
Limit the pickup/delivery option to designated drop-off points only.
Testing Plan
Launching ‘Tailored’ as a beta version to a limited user base will allow to gather useful feedback by simulating a fragment of the overall product. Incorporating an in-app feedback mechanism and conducting targeted interviews and surveys with both users and participating tailors will facilitate gathering and understanding user insights.
Setting key KPIs.
If we consider this as an MVP project, it would be the next step to set some initial performance indicators. If we take as a fact that there is an adequate number of collaborating tailor shops, then some KPIs would be:
The number of signups in the app.
The number of orders made through the app.
The average time that it took to complete an order.
Prioritization in design.
Tailored app is a complete SaaS product using a lot of standardized features such as the sign in/login, scheduling, choosing address on Google Maps and payment. through this case study, I haven’t gone very deep into each of these features as I was focusing on structuring the main user flow. However, if this project would continue developing, I would give extra attention on solidifying the design language and define better even these processes.
Include Tailors into the overall process.
I realised that in this project, I have paid main attention to the main consumer of the product, without taking into consideration, the most important, who were the tailor businesses from where I would have extracted very crucial and constructive feedback.
Extra attention on Accessibility.
I believe that there is always room for improvement in making an app more and accessible and easy to use. As this project by its nature, it might be hard to use for some groups of people, it would be a carry on task to improve it.
Possible add on features:
Choose tailor based on how busy or fast a tailor shop is. As an extra filtering category when selecting a tailor, it would probably be useful to know the time an order needs to be completed. In case the selected tailor shop by the user is super busy for instance, another selection might have been better.
Use it as a B2B product too. A possible collaboration with big retail companies who want to offer tailor services to their customers.