Fashion Pub “Second-hand luxury fashion marketplace”

Project Overview

Be kind to your wallet and the Earth!

People are passionate about fashion and high-end brands. However it’s pricy and unaffordable for most, and the environmental impact is significant.

Fashion Pub offers a curated luxury marketplace that elevates style and promotes sustainability by encouraging the reuse of high-end fashion.

I had an amazing experience collaborating with an exceptional team on the Fashion Pub project in autumn 2022. FashionPub is a platform that helps fashion enthusiasts sell their used high-end items with the assistance of experts who assess, price, and ensure the authenticity of the products. Project’s goal was to create a functional user friendly B2C E-commerce website and web app. It allows buyers to purchase luxury brands at fair and affordable prices. Fashion Pub serves as the ultimate online marketplace for buying and selling luxury items, offering a trustworthy and luxurious experience. Additionally, it promotes sustainability by encouraging the reuse of high-end fashion. I collaborated closely with the team to define, develop, and deliver visual designs

Discover Process

Research

We utilized the Double Diamond method, which is based on the Design Thinking Methodology, to guide our project and navigated back and forth between stages as we progressed. Our discovery phase included conducting qualitative and quantitative research. This involved designing a survey to which 50 people responded. Based on the results, we selected 8 individuals for an interview to gain deeper insights. After collecting he result we designed into an Affinity Diagram.

Interview & Afinity Diagram

Key Takeaways

Users prioritize seeing real photos of products to establish trust and verify authenticity. Provide comprehensive item descriptions, high-quality images, and accurate condition reports.
Offer fast, reliable, and accessible customer service to address user inquiries and issues.
They value assurance that they are purchasing the original product.
Users desire clear assessments of product condition and price by third-party authentication.

Competitive Analysis

We conducted a competitive analysis of 10 websites within the field to evaluate their strengths and weaknesses.

Key Takeaways

Authentic, multi-angle photos are crucial for showcasing second-hand products effectively.
Product condition transparency, prominently displayed alongside photos, remains pivotal.
Return policies were commonly offered, ensuring customer confidence.
Search bar played a pivotal role, although limited product availability and lack of direct seller contact often impacted user experience, with product reviews being absent on most sites.

Define and Design process

Persona

Based on our research findings, we developed personas to build empathy and keep the user at the center of the design process, better catering to the needs and concerns of both buyers and sellers, and ensuring a seamless and trustworthy user experience for all parties involved.

Impact–Effort Matrix

The Impact–Effort Matrix helps prioritize tasks based on their potential impact and the effort required to implement them. For the Fashion Pub project, we will categorize tasks into four quadrants: Quick Wins, Big Bets, Fill-ins, and Money Pit.

Conclusion

Focusing on Quick Wins and Big Bets will help establish Fashion Pub as a trusted, user-friendly, and sustainable platform. Quick Wins provide immediate benefits with minimal effort, while Big Bets, though resource-intensive, offer significant long-term value. Balancing these efforts will ensure a successful launch and growth trajectory for Fashion Pub.

Customer Journey Map

By mapping out the customer journey, Fashion Pub can better understand the experiences, thoughts, and feelings of its users at each stage. This understanding helps in designing a seamless, trustworthy, and satisfying user experience, addressing pain points, and ultimately fostering loyalty and advocacy among users.

POV Statement

"Fashion enthusiasts need a trustworthy, affordable platform to buy and sell pre-owned luxury fashion items, ensuring authenticity and promoting sustainability, because they face challenges with high costs, counterfeit risks, and a desire for eco-friendly fashion choices."

We brainstormed in various meetings, after thorough evaluation, selected the final concept based on a scoring system. The criteria for acceptance were:

Challenge Resolution: Does it effectively address the initial challenge?
User Pain Points: How well does it alleviate the users’ pain points?
POV Statement Alignment: How closely does it align with the POV statement?
Research Support: How strongly is it backed by research data?
Design Feasibility: Is the design effort required within the project’s scope?
Scalability: Is it a scalable solution that can benefit a large user base?
Competitive Value: Does it offer significant value compared to competitors?

Design Solution

Information Architecture

We created an IA to map out the whole design.
We wanted to help users achieve their goal by providing structure, consistency, and an easy-to-navigate interface.

Wireframes

To establish user flow and content layout, we conducted multiple sketches and brainstorming sessions with the team. After several iterations, we finalized wireframes for screens that users would use to complete tasks. We started with low-fidelity design and explored various patterns. After lots of discussions and iterations, we designed mid-fi mockups and start the preparation for the usability testing.

Mood Board

Mood Board embodies the perfect blend of luxury, sustainability, and nature-inspired aesthetics. Our design draws inspiration from high-end brands and luxury lifestyles, seamlessly integrating the organic beauty of nature to create a unique and sustainable fashion statement.

Usability testing and Iteration

We came up with following tasks to do moderated remote usability testing with 5 of users:
Task :

Explore in the website and browse available items.
Search for a specific luxury item (e.g., Chanel handbag).
Read item descriptions.
Add an item to the cart and proceed to checkout.
Complete the purchase and track the order.

Results of the test

We affinity mapped their feedback and discussed the potential iterations.

We prioritized their feedback based on the value/effort of each change.

Here you can see some of the changes that we’ve applied based on the users feedback:

High-Fidelity Wireframes

After multiple reviews and iterations, we created high fidelity wireframe designs for Fashion Pub that prioritize clarity and user-friendliness. Efficient navigation, filters and facets, multiple CTAs, and detailed product information help users find relevant details quickly.
Here are the final versions of our digital wireframes. Seeing this progress has been incredibly rewarding.

Desktop Version

Mobile Version

Next Steps

For the next step we would offer to work on two new features to elevate the user’s experience:

Live Chat Support: Provide real-time assistance and improve customer service.
Virtual Reality (VR) Technology: Allow users to virtually try on clothes, enhancing their shopping experience.