Reviste: Case Study
Reviste is an e-commerce app designed to be a second-hand clothing marketplace for the Peruvian market.
With the app, I want to create a mobile environment designed to meet the needs of an online clothing store and contribute to sustainability in my country.
Problem definition
Hypothesis
I started the process thinking about how the second-hand clothing market really worked in Peru, being that it is not the most popular option for young women when expanding their closet. There seems to be a lot of independent sellers and even thrift websites, but the reputation of second-hand clothing is something difficult to change: Users do not believe they can find the clothes of their choice and are highly concerned about the condition of the clothes they sold, as well as for security.
📌 Reviste users would like to feel like they’re not only contributing to sustainability with second hand shopping, but also that they’re shopping for quality clothing according to their taste.
User Research
Interviews with users
We invited a group of potential users to test the initial hypothesis and gain insights about thrifting in Lima, Perú. To reach a higher audience, we redacted a short 10 question survey and submitted it to different platforms (Instagram, Facebook). We got 59 responses.
Results
- 75% of the audience already shops online.
- 62% of the audience haven’t shopped second hand.
- 85% of the audience experience troubles finding clothes that match their style.
- 30% wanted to start their own fashion-related business someday (Wow!)
- 75% puts high value in their friends’ and family’s opinion on their clothing.
- 75% of the audience don’t think they could find something they like at a second-hand clothing store/thrift shop.
Insights
- Prejudice around second hand clothing is very prevalent in the audience, and it makes customers believe they won’t find anything that matches their style.
- Opinions of their social environment on their clothing are highly valued.
- Misinformation and the difficulty to find stores that sell curated second hand clothing feeds the fake image of what second hand clothing is to our potential customers.
User Flow
I had the job to map out our users’ happy path to getting a new piece of clothing in the app, and also to build our core functionality: Find and buy a piece of clothing that you like.
Coming up with solutions
After some brainstorming sessions and remove some crazy ideas, I led a round of How might we?
With our insights in hand, we started generating ideas that aligned with the objective and neccesities of our user.
- Prejudice around second hand clothing is very prevalent in the audience, and it makes customers believe they won’t find anything that matches their style. Solution: Communicate effectively to the users, highlighting the sustainability aspect of thrifting, let the trend of eco-friendly marketing be your friend!
- Opinions of their social environment on their clothing are highly valued. Solution: Add microinteractions with the rest of the Reviste users, rating and messages are core to the general e-commerce experience.
- Misinformation and the difficulty to find stores that sell curated second hand clothing feeds the fake image of what second hand clothing is to our potential customers. Solution: Add reccomendations to the users, and let them easily search for clothing items they like. Make sellers submit detailed information like color, size, style and quality. Be transparent.
Prototyping
Wireframing
I drafted out the core functionalities of the product and added the screens needed to complete different tasks. I uploaded these wireframes to Invision to rapidly test it with users. We got 5 interviews done.
Findings
- For you, the rating options and message seller were our users’ favorite sections of the app.
- 3 users asked where they could find the “Ongoing orders”, highlighting their importance to keep track of their clothes.
- Some comments were made about the delivery options, which is on the seller as of now, it should be the main focus of the next release if we want to make our users trustful of the app.
Design solutions
Final screens
The high-fi prototype and design is built on the obtained insights and feedback from our users. It focuses on the task and the content, prioritizing it to get a seamless experience for both the buyer and the seller.
Look & Feel
Besides our precious insights, we also got some more information about our users: The social media and e-commerce apps they use the most. Some interesting results came in: Instagram is both used as social media and e-commerce for thrifting, so we decided to keep it as a foundation of what the product should look like and what functionalities are core to the app.
After adapting the brand colors to the interfaces and thinking about new elements and typographies, I came to the conclusion that the design should be clean but sophisticated. We tested these final prototypes with our users and they loved it!
What I learned
Don’t try to reinvent the wheel: As a designer, I always try to offer a creative solution to any problem I may encounter. However, as time passes I’ve learned that trying to come up with a HIGHLY innovative idea may not always be the best way to approach a problem. Some things are popular because they’re good, and that’s ok. We can keep trying to make a better solution but don’t get too stuck with it. To make Reviste, I got inspired by several american thrift shopping apps, and social media in which the users are already selling their clothes.