Dressmate Web App

Summary

Dressmate has tasked a team of UX designers from General Assembly to evaluate their current product and recommend design iterations to help improve their user experience.

As a team, we started by understanding Dressmate’s business, evaluating their current website platform, and interviewing current and potential users. From these insights, we came up with a design solution to address the problem of how to get users more engaged after signing-up. In order to determine if we designed a prototype to suit users needs, we conducted two usability tests and a card sort. 

Client

Dressmate is a peer-to-peer clothing marketplace for college students. Consequently, Dressmate is building a movement to reduce clothing waste and forge stronger communities. Launched at Georgetown University in 2016, Dressmate plans to expand to 10 college campuses in the next year.

My Role

Working in a team with 2 other UX Designers, I was the point communications person and spearheaded the research initiative. Once the project was finished, I went back and finished out the next round of design iterations.

Business Model Canvas

In order to understand Dressmate’s goals and structure, we broke down Dressmate’s business into its core components by creating a Business Model Canvas.

Competitive Analysis

The competitive matrix is a visual analysis of where a brand fits in the marketplace. Showing Dressmate on this matrix alongside competitors helped us understand who their direct competitors are, as well as discover the true value of what the company stands for in comparison to their competitors.

Current Website

Before jumping into understanding the user need and crafting solutions, we examined Dressmate’s current website through a heuristics evaluation, usability test and mobile audit view.

Heurisitcs

We conducted heuristics to understand the effectiveness of Dressmate’s web-app for current users. We utilized the Abby method, rating the home page, the on-boarding process, browse listings page, checkout and create a listing in ten categories on a scale from 1-5.

Overall, Dressmate scored very well on the heuristics analysis. The areas that need improvement are in delightfulness, findability, accessibility and credibility

Usability Test

To test the usability of Dressmate’s current website, we performed usability tests with female college students and recent college graduates. Along with this, we asked them about the impressions of the website and their final thoughts after moving through each task. To get a sense of the full web-app experience, we chose tasks that covered four different areas.

• 5/5 users commented on how they liked the aesthetics of the website with 2/5 users commenting they liked the aesthetics of the landing page better than the website app
• 4/5 users commented that they wanted a better search function specifically searching for others
• 2/5 users during task 3 commented that they would like pricing suggestions
• The tasks that users had difficulty was task for with an average rating of 1.6 with multiple users commenting that it was annoying to not have it alphabetized or have it be searchable

User Interviews

With Dressmate’s plan to expand to 10 new college campuses, we conducted user interviews at NYU and Barnard to gain an understanding of students’ behaviors and needs surrounding clothing habits.

In order to find potential users in our target market, we sent out a screener survey. The response we received was minimal, so we went to NYU and Barnard campuses to recruit interviewees as those are two schools that dress mate is planning on expanding to. We interviewed 5 NYU students, 3 Barnard students, and 1 FIT student. We asked them questions regarding their clothing and sharing habits to determine if their user needs align to the ones that were at Gerogetown.

Synthesis

To synthesize the data from our interviews we used an affinity map, a tool that gathers large amounts of language data (ideas, opinions, issues) and organizes them into groupings based on their natural relationships. Here are some of our key takeaways:

• Majority of users would sign up but currently do not use the app 
• Users found Dressmate to be user-friendly and easy to
• Users wished the app was more branded and engaging
• Users would use the app more if there were more listings
• Users love the Dressmate brand and concept

Persona

In order to fully understand our user research synthesis, we created a persona to reflect the potential user of Dressmate. A persona is a fictional character created to represent the users that we interviewed, with all of the details and facts pulled directly from our research.

Problem Statement

Female college students struggle to find clothing they want to wear for parties and special occasions because of their limited budget and wardrobe. As a solution, they tend to share clothing with their friends, but encounter limited sizing options and don't fully trust their friends to return items in good condition.

How might we help female college students expand their clothing options in an affordable and reliable way?

Conclusion

From our research, we concluded that the general Dressmate concept was a great fit to address user needs. In fact, when interviewing our subjects, many expressed excitement around the idea of Dressmate.

User Interviews

In order to find out insights about the Dressmate experience, we asked current Dressmate users about their habits around using the web-app. We sent out an email to all of the current Dressmate users. We sent out an email to all current Dressmate users and conducted 8 interviews, 4 by phone and 4 via email.

Synthesis

To synthesize the data from our interviews we used an affinity map, a tool that gathers large amounts of language data (ideas, opinions, issues) and organizes them into groupings based on their natural relationships. Here were some of our key takeaways:

• Majority of users would sign up but currently do not use the app 
• Users found Dressmate to be user-friendly and easy to use
• Users wished the app was more branded, engaging and provided more options
• Users would use the app more if there were more listings
• Users love the Dressmate concept

Persona

In order to fully understand our user research synthesis, we created a persona to reflect the current user of Dressmate.

Problem Identified

Many female Georgetown students who are members of Dressmate are not active after signing up because there aren't many listings, and don’t feel fully comfortable lending out their clothes. Consequently, they don't feel engaged or invested within the app.

How might we help Dressmate generate more listings, and create a more engaging, safe app?

Solution

In order to address our problem statement, we created an on-boarding experience, and revamped Dressmate’s web application, and created a seamless brand experience that directly addresses Lizzie’s pain points.

On-Boarding

To reinforce the value of the product and incentivize Dressmate users, we designed and implemented an on-boarding experience for new users. In this new on-boarding experience, we asked additional questions to create a more personalized experience, illustrated how Dressmate works to reinforce Dressmate’s value, and implemented a call-to-action at the end of the experience.

Seamless experience

Through our heuristics and interview insights, we discovered that the inconsistency between the landing website and web-app was disengaging to users. In order to address this, we created a seamless brand experience across Dressmate’s web presence. We did this by creating a new navigation through a cardsort with users, and implemented brand elements into the bare-boned web-app.

Prototype

Usability Testing

In total, our team conducted two iterations of our design solution, in which we tested both iterations to understand the utility of our solution. Post-sprint, I then solo created a final iteration in what you see above.

Takeaways from the latest usability test included:
• 3/5 users had a hard time locating where to sign up and didn’t finish the on-boarding experience
• Users commented that they were confused about the 3-day verses the 6-day
• Users tried to search for other students via listings, not through the “My Campus” page

In order to address these insights, I reformatted the buttons and tracking into the on-boarding system and incorporated new language, create a filter option for the number of rental days, and added in a closet to the filters.

Next Steps

• Validate our design through further usability testing
• Consult with development team for functionality
• Elevate social interaction on Dressmate
• Implement suggested pricing on clothing rentals
• Implement design across platforms; move to mobile application
• Team up with branding experts to develop Dressmate brand assets