PROJECT OVERVIEW
Creating a seamless web-based project management tool for fashion innovators.
Currently, there is an evident market gap for an industry-specific project management tool that is tailored to cater to the unique requirements of the fashion industry.
In my role as a lead designer of a team of 3 UX designers at 99 Yards, a fashion start-up company, I had the opportunity to delve into the prevailing challenges faced by fashion creatives who rely on project management tools primarily designed for corporate environments.
👩🏻💼 Role: Lead UX Designer
🗓 Timeline: 4/24/2023 - 5/28/2023
💻 Tools: Figma, pen and paper
DELIVERABLES
User Research, User Personas, User Flows, Low-Fidelity Wireframes (Sketches), Medium-Fidelity Wireframes
Understanding the Problem
To gain deeper insights into the project management process as it is currently experienced by professionals in the fashion industry, I conducted the following research to uncover both areas of potential improvement (pain points) and points of satisfaction related to the products currently being utilized:
Research Methods
User Surveys
User Interviews
Secondary Research
Competitive Analysis
Gathering Insights
After conducting the user interviews with professionals who work in the fashion industry, my team and I got together and grouped the unique responses under common themes to synthesize the pains identified.
Participants' responses sorted into different groups and categories
Insights Gathered
The insights I gathered from conducting user interviews include:
Existing popular project management tools primarily focus on serving corporate needs rather than catering to the requirements of creative professionals.
Many of these tools have a steep learning curve, which poses a challenge for users in adapting to their functionalities.
Fashion creatives often refrain from utilizing project management tools due to their lack of user-friendliness and intuitive interfaces. Additionally, pricing can be a significant deterrent for adoption.
Among creatives, Monday.com, Asana, and Milanote emerged as more popular choices for project management tools.
Learning More About the Target Users
Given the time constraint and limited budget, conducting more than 5 interviews for this project was not feasible. To gain further insights into the project management experience of fashion creatives, I turned to secondary research as a valuable resource to supplement my findings.
Secondary Research Questions
Competitive Analysis
As monday.com, Asana, Milanote, and Jira were often mentioned by participants during user interviews, I felt compelled to conduct more research on these companies’ product to identify market opportunities and inspire innovation.
After examining the essential features identified by fashion professionals in my initial research, I discovered that although these popular project management apps offer a diverse array of features and functions, none of them include a digitized call sheet. In the fashion industry, this document is considered indispensable, making its absence a significant gap in the market.
Competitive analysis to compare and contrast features between the most popular project management tools
The User
User Persona
Through my research, I identified two distinct user types that our product aimed to address and solve problems for.
Alex, fashion creative
Sarah, fashion project manager
The Product Vision
As a product, we wanted to position ourselves as the leading project management tool for the fashion industry with 3 key focus areas:
Collaboration and Communication
Fashion projects involve multiple stakeholders, including designers, stylists, photographers, models, manufacturers, and clients. A leading project management tool should facilitate seamless collaboration and communication between all parties involved.
Visual Asset Management
Fashion projects heavily rely on visual assets like mood boards, sketches, sample images, and look books. The project management tool should have robust visual asset management features to store, organize, and share these assets.
Logistics Management
This category encompasses features and functionalities related to the planning, coordination, and execution of various production aspects, including organizing and distributing essential information related to fashion shoots or shows.
Defining the MVP for 99 Yards
To visualize the user experience through the app and streamline app navigation, I conducted workshops and sketching sessions with the team to come up with user flows and storyboard to capture the MVP.
We identified the following key features:
Project Management
Allows users to create and manage projects they’ve either created or been added as a team member.
Tasks and Workflow Management
Allows for creating and assigning tasks, setting priorities, and tracking progress.
Calendar and Scheduling
Includes a comprehensive calendar feature to schedule and manage key dates, appointments, meetings, and events related to fashion projects.
Budgeting and Expense Tracking
Incorporates budgeting and expense tracking capabilities specific to the fashion industry. It allows for creating and managing project budgets, tracking expenses related to wardrobe, materials, travel, and more.
Visual Organization
Allows users to collect and curate images from various sources, provides options to drag and drop images, resize and crop images, and arrange them in a visually pleasing layout, and enables collaboration among team members by allowing them to share, annotate, comment on, and collaborate on a moodboard.
Production Management
Includes the call sheet feature that specifically focuses on organizing and distributing essential information related to fashion shoots or shows, such as talent assignments, wardrobe details, location details, and shoot/show schedules.
User Flows
I created user flows to depict the sequence of screens, actions, and interactions that a user will go through while completing the main red routes of the app.
The MVP user flows. Click to view
Sketches
The initial designs that include the main screens that incorporate most of the essential Minimum Viable Product (MVP) features (excludes Budget and Expense Tracking that was added later on).
Mid-fidelity Wireframes
After the storyboard brainstorming session with the team, I created mid-fidelity wireframes to gain a clearer visual representation of the application's structure, layout, and content organization compared to low-fidelity sketches.
Home Screen
My Task
My Project
Project Overview
Project Tasks
Timeline
Project Calendar
Project Moodboard
Event Call Sheet
Project Budget
Final Thoughts
Working in an early-stage startup was a steep learning curve. It was an eye-opening experience that taught me a lot about being lean and knowing when and where to focus energy and efforts.
Unfortunately, given the project's short timeline, I was not able to conduct any usability testings with the visual representation of the user interface I created through wireframes. If more time was given, I would definitely conduct guerilla usability testings to uncover any potential usability issues before the high fidelity screens are created by a UI designer in the company.
However, while conducting usability testings was not feasible within the given timeframe, I ensured that the wireframes effectively communicated the intended user experience and interface design.
Although my involvement in the project was primarily focused on wireframes, I maintained a holistic perspective on the user-centered design approach. I collaborated with stakeholders, developers, and other team members to ensure the wireframes aligned with the project vision, business requirements, and technical constraints. While time limitations restricted the scope of my deliverables, I continuously sought opportunities to provide valuable insights and recommendations based on my understanding of user-centered design principles.