adEpt
One-stop solution for adaptive fashion
Self-driven Project
Team
Mansanjam Kaur
Mahalakshmi TM
Sreelakshmi SB
Figma
Miro
Role
UX/UI designer for the "Consumer" and partially for the "Expert Designer"
Timeline
August 2022- December 2022
Tools
Project Description
Skills
Interaction design
User research
Accessibility
UI design
The project aimed at creating a digital shopping platform that connects people with physical disabilities to designers working in the field of adaptive fashion in order to make adaptive clothing more accessible for people with disabilities.
People with disabilities face difficulties in several aspects of their life. An often overlooked aspect is clothing.
Problem Statement
How might we make the online shopping experience for adaptive clothing more inclusive and accessible to people with disabilities?
Competitive Analysis
Analyzed a mix of direct and indirect competitors to understand the existing online adaptive clothing market.
Key Insights
Are the consumers able to find their perfect fit on online shopping platforms easily?
How important is 'style' and 'customization' in adaptive wear for the consumers?
Why are there so limited designers/brands involved in adaptive fashion?
User Interviews
Users are inclined to shop online but have inhibitions about finding the right fit
Users value fashion and not just functionality alone, when it comes to their clothes
Users have to get their clothes customized by tailors.
From the point of view of a consumer
From the point of view of a designer
Designing adaptive clothes is complex; requires inputs from various fields
Users and Designers need to work together to design the perfect fit
Adaptive Clothing is difficult to standardize
Key Insights
Updated Problem Statement
With these findings, our problem statement was updated as follows:
How might me make it easier for users with disabilities to get clothes customized to their needs?
How might we enable designers to learn, design, and connect with each other and with potential customers?
Personas
Consumer
Novice Designer
Expert Designer
Kunal
Consumer
“I can’t find clothes I like anymore”
About
Name: Kunal
Age: 38
Location: Delhi
Occupation: Journalist
Core Needs
Adaptive Customizations
Style options
Convenient shopping
Pain Points
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Hates in-store shopping due to lack of accessible buildings.
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Cannot find clothing that is both fashionable and comfortable.
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Lack of awareness about adaptive clothing and accessibility among clothing manufactures and designers.
Rina
Novice Designer
"I want to design adaptive wear but I don’t know where to begin”
About
Name: Rina
Age: 25
Location: Mumbai
Occupation: Fashion Designer
Core Needs
Guidance for adaptive fashion
Learning from designers
Understanding disability needs
Pain Points
-
Finds it exhausting to navigate online resources for information regarding adaptive designs
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Unfamiliarity with adaptive clothing jargon and techniques; feels lost when perusing guides
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Nervous about reaching out directly to users with disabilities to get inputs regarding various adaptive clothing requirements
Neha
Expert Designer
“I want my designs to reach more customers”
About
Name: Neha
Age: 40
Location: Bangalore
Occupation: Fashion Designer
Core Needs
Increase consumer base
Collaboration with consumer
Pain Points
-
Limited awareness of Adaptive clothing in India; lots of stigma surrounding adaptive clothing
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Dearth of innovation in adaptive clothing
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Doesn't know of brands working in the adaptive clothing space, that she can collaborate with.
adEpt
Introducing
A collaborative approach to adaptive fashion.
Storyboarding
User : Consumer
User Goal: To get customized clothes for a wedding
User : Novice Designer
User Goal: To find sewing guides to design “Cotton pants with a velcro seam” for a consumer with a motor disability
User : Expert Designer
User Goal: To increase outreach in the adaptive clothing market.
User Flow
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Usability Testing of Wireframes
User Task: Use adEpt to shop online and provide measurements
What if i want to shop clothes for my friends/family. Can I change my preferences?
There is so much to digest here!
Okay, I wasn't expecting this.. What does the whole 3d avatar thing mean?
Implementing User Feedback >>
What went wrong?
‘Send order request’ is confusing for users
Users were thrown off by 'send order request' and expected to see 'order now' instead. And, they were thrown off by the fact that they were not shown a confirmation page or a checkout page.
Plan of action
-
Replace 'send order request' to 'order now' to reduce confusion.
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Show an order tracking page right after the user clicks on 'order now' which shows them that the order is waiting for approval from the designer.
What could have been better?
Confusion regarding provide measurements
The idea of generating a 3D avatar for manipulating measurements was not intuitive to users. Also, the users showed concern about the accuracy of the measurements generated by the 3D avatar.
Plan of action
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Show users how to generate their 3D avatar through a tutorial video at the beginning.
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Provide users the option to edit their measurements and save those changes once the avatar is generated.
User Task 2: Look up and save a tutorial on making velcro pants
Why cannot I directly search for a guide to make pants, why do I have to search by designer?
Implementing User Feedback >>
User Feedback:
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Users appreciated a dedicated search bar on the guides page, since it made their search easier.
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Users could easily look up for different guides since they were now categorized on the basis of garment types.
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The term 'guides' was not intuitive for the users. Therefore, we decided to replace it with 'learn' in our next iteration.
User Task: Designer accepting order from consumer
Designers found it difficult to navigate the orders
Designers mentioned the order page had an overload of information with all the product details, order details and steps crammed up on one screen. .
Plan of action
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Splitting the order details and the order status into 2 tabs to reduce information overload and confusion.
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Compressing the order details into accordions.
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Clearly marking the different steps as 1,2,3 etc. and adding a progress bar to keep the designer informed about the steps for completing the order.
Core Features
Customizing results
The consumer can define their requirements under 'Adaptive preferences' section. These are shared with the designer (if the consumer gives consent). This ensures a smoother process for the designer as they make the clothes. The shop results are also automatically filtered as per these preferences. The consumer can change/disable these settings anytime.
Fostering Collaboration
Designers can stay in constant touch with the consumers throughout the design process via chat and calls. Since, designing adaptive clothes require a great deal of inputs from the consumer, adEpt takes care of it effectively.
Making measurements easy
AdEpt allows consumers with multiple disabilities to share detailed body measurements with designers when ordering clothes by scanning and uploading a 360-degree video to generate a 3D avatar, which can be edited at any time.
Helping designers grow
adEpt further enables the consumer to shop by designer. The consumer can check out the detailed profile of the designer and browse through their portfolio as well as store products to get a better idea of their offerings.
Final Prototype
Ethical Considerations
Not playing into stereotypes surrounding disabilities.
Protecting sensitive data about the user's disability and body needs.
Limitations/ Next Steps
Edge Cases
Users expressed interest in both designing and shopping for adaptive clothes, but our app only allows one choice. We may add a third workflow to accommodate this edge case.
Privacy Control
Our app connects designers with consumers, but allowing constant communication can be disruptive for consumers. We need to address this in the next design phase.
My Learnings
Research plays a major role in directing your project. At the start of the project, our idea was only focused on making adaptive fashion accessible to PWD's. However, through scholarly research, market analysis, and user interviews, we got introduced to the other sides of our problem i.e. the challenges faced by the designers in the field of adaptive fashion.
At times, there can be dis-alignments within the team while narrowing down on the scope of the project or when deciding the design system of the app. However, making through these challenges helped me enhance my teamwork and collaboration skills.
Through this project, I realized the importance of constant feedback from the users throughout the design process. By testing our paper prototypes, wireframes and mid-fidelity prototypes, we got some very helpful insights to improve the workflow of the app as well as the visuals and the interface of the app.