Musical Playlist-Generating App to Broaden Cultural Insights
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Your style, your music.
Fashion Dolls is an app concept that seamlessly blends style and technology. This innovative app not only features an intuitive and engaging UI but also places a strong emphasis on ease-of-use and functional design. Fashion Dolls stands out by generating personalized playlists based on users' fashion choices, offering a unique fusion of style and music tailored to individual preferences.
My Role:
PLATFORMS: IOS
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In 2023, I led the user experience research and development of the app concept Fashion Dolls. My responsbilities included, user research, concept development, product strategy, information architecture, designing user flows, interaction design, visual design, user testing, and prototyping.
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"Fashion Dolls would be a go-to for style and tunes. An app that effortlessly turns my fashion picks into playlists,
is something I absolutely need in my life."
The challenge begets the solution.
In addressing a crucial problem within our user base, we identified a common longing for deeper insights into musical culture that often go unexplored. Many users expressed a desire for a more personalized and diverse music experience that aligns with their individual tastes. To tackle this challenge, Fashion Dolls introduces a groundbreaking solution.
By leveraging users' personal style choices, the app dynamically generates playlists tailored to their unique aesthetic preferences. This innovative approach not only enhances user engagement but also opens up a world of diverse musical genres, providing a curated musical journey that resonates authentically with each user's style and aesthetic. Fashion Dolls stands as the bridge connecting users to a richer and more personalized musical exploration.
Project Goals/ Business Requirements:
1. Allow users to generate playlists based on their persona and outfit choices.
2.Establish a connection between aesthetic preferences and musical recommendations.
3. Require user authorization to connect to Spotify data.
4.Enable dynamic selection of outfit choices in the selection process to allow the creation of a playlist based on the user's input.
5. Include a feature displaying the user's playlist history, allowing them to revisit and modify selections for a continuous dynamic experience.
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Key Considerations:
-Ensure the app is interesting and curated for enhanced user engagement.
-Design a user-friendly authorization flow for connecting to Spotify data.
-Design an interactive interface that allows users to seamlessly select and modify their outfits, with each choice impacting their playlist.
-Product should maintain MVP business requirements, and still remain interesting to end-users.
Our target audience is aimed to be the younger population
age group 18-35
Our user base consists of fashion-forward individuals with a strong affinity for the latest trends and a deep appreciation for diverse music. These proactive enthusiasts seek a platform that seamlessly integrates their evolving style choices with curated music recommendations. Our app is designed to meet this demand, providing an engaging environment where users can effortlessly craft a personalized soundtrack that reflects their individuality, mood, and preferences.
Tutorial Screen
The Process
To assess the usability of Fashion Dolls, I conducted a comprehensive evaluation employing user survey testing and 6 usability tests. This approach facilitated a thorough grasp of user needs by leveraging both qualitative and quantitative insights. While users demonstrated a grasp of the app's fundamental concept, challenges persisted in certain UI aspects of my design. Dialogues with users during usability testing underscored the necessity to streamline the design, redirecting focus towards a simple and clean aesthetic. This strategic shift resulted in refining design choices, yielding a more polished app aligned with both client and user requirements.
User Survey Results
I conducted an online survey with 15 users who fall in our target demographic
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Usability Interview Observations
For my UX case study, I conducted a series of six user interviews, employing a mix of in-person and remote sessions to ensure a diverse range of perspectives. Adopting a semi-structured approach, I utilized an interview script as a framework while allowing flexibility for spontaneous follow-up questions. This strategy aimed to extract nuanced responses and avoid introducing any bias into the participants' narratives. By posing open-ended questions, I sought to uncover rich, unfiltered insights into user behaviors, preferences, and pain points. The combination of in-person and remote interviews, along with a semi-structured format, provided a comprehensive understanding of user interactions with the Fashion Dolls app.
Usability Test Recording
Through insights gathered in UX interviews, pivotal adjustments were identified for the Fashion Dolls app. Users expressed a preference for an expedited cart addition process, leading to the incorporation of a pop-up item catalog alongside the sliding menu. This feature streamlines the user experience by offering a direct route to desired item categories. Additionally, user feedback emphasized the utility of an introductory guide for app navigation. Consequently, a series of welcoming pages were integrated to facilitate a smoother onboarding experience, aiding users in becoming adept at utilizing the app's functionalities.
Competitive Analyisis
Spotify's 'Get Ready With Music'
Fashion Dolls
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Get Ready with Music lets users choose the vibe of their outfit to curate a matching playlist for their mood.
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Engages users based on mood and outfit vibe, fostering a connection between music and emotions.
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Offers mood-based personalization but lacks a direct connection to users' daily style choices.
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Simplifies the process with a straightforward mood selection, reducing complexity but limiting the personal touch.
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Provides flexibility in choosing moods but restricts the user to general emotions rather than specific aesthetics.
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Seamlessly integrates with the overall Spotify experience, ensuring a cohesive and familiar interface.
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The Personalized Playlist Generator on Fashion Dolls allows users to link real-world outfit choices to curated music playlists.
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Elevates user engagement by directly linking real-world outfits to personalized music, offering a tangible and holistic experience.
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Achieves a deeper level of personalization by connecting users' real-world style choices to curated playlists, reflecting individual aesthetics.
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Integrates real-world elements, allowing users to navigate their actual wardrobe, creating a more intricate and immersive user journey.
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Offers a broader spectrum of personal expression through users' unique fashion choices, allowing for more granular playlist curation.
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Integrates outfit-based playlist creation seamlessly within the Fashion Dolls app, enhancing the overall user experience.
While Spotify's "Get Ready with Music" excels in connecting mood to music, Fashion Dolls' Personalized Playlist Generator takes it a step further by integrating users' real-world style choices, offering a more comprehensive and personalized experience. The direct link between fashion and music on Fashion Dolls creates a unique niche, providing users with a richer and more tailored interaction.
Design Process
In response to the client's vision for Fashion Dolls, the design process embarked on a distinctive journey to infuse the app with retro-futuristic UI elements, a monospace type font, and a neutral color scheme. The client's directive aimed to cultivate a unique visual identity that harmonizes the nostalgia of retro aesthetics with the modern, sleek contours of futuristic design. The selection of a monospace type font adds a touch of uniformity and aligns with the futuristic theme, conveying a sense of precision and clarity in the app's communication.
Early design sketches
The neutral color scheme, intentionally chosen, embraces simplicity while allowing users to focus on the vibrant and varied hues of their fashion choices. This design choice ensures that the app remains a versatile canvas for users' personal styles, while still adhering to a cohesive and elegant aesthetic. The blending of retro and futuristic elements within the UI design aims to strike a delicate balance, creating an engaging and timeless visual language that resonates with Fashion Dolls' diverse user base. This design approach not only meets the client's vision but also propels Fashion Dolls into a realm where style seamlessly intertwines with cutting-edge design principles.
Accessibility
Ensuring inclusivity and accessibility, I meticulously adhered to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) throughout the design process of Fashion Dolls. Using colorblind plugins and integrating WCAG guidelines, I prioritized features that accommodate users with diverse needs. Implementing color contrasts and patterns accessible to individuals with color vision deficiencies, I fine-tuned the app's visual elements. These measures not only enhance the overall user experience but also guarantee that Fashion Dolls surpasses accessibility requirements, creating an inclusive platform where everyone can seamlessly engage with the intersection of fashion and music.
User Persona
Sarah Melton, our user persona, embodies the quintessential intersection of fashion and music. As a freelance writer for a NYC lifestyle magazine that features musical talent, she navigates the urban landscape with a keen eye for emerging trends. A true aficionado of both fashion and music, Sarah's frustration with constraints within her cultural network becomes the driving force for her to use Fashion Dolls to break free from mainstream norms. Her openness to exploration and desire for diversity perfectly match the cornerstone of the app's mission, ensuring it becomes a transformative space for discovering novel and unconventional expressions in both fashion and music.
User persona
Spotify permissions screen
User Flow
Condensed user flow
High-Fidelity Clickable Prototype
Do you want to test out the Fashion Dolls prototype? Try adding the Balenciaga sunglasses, Margiela earrings, and Gucci 1961 bag to your virtual cart. Click on the cart icon in the top-right corner to review your selections, and from there, initiate the magic by hitting the "Generate Playlist" button. Fashion Dolls will curate a personalized playlist, perfectly synchronized with your unique style. Enjoy the seamless fusion of fashion and music as you embark on a stylish journey tailored just for you.
High Fidelity Prototype