For my first project at General Assembly in UX design, I was tasked with creating an app for a classmate to help them solve a problem in their life. I partnered with Yinka Awoyinka to create a clothing app for her that allowed her to add and organize items in a virtual closet so that she could "get up and glow". 

My process for developing a solution included:

• conducting user research; 
• identifying pain points and a particular problem; 
• developing concepts and user flows;
• iterating screens and producing a prototype.

My first point of entry was to interview Yinka to get to know her better. Yinka is a lovely lady who is married with two children. She’s creative and historically has channeled her energy into making hats as a milliner (for such events as Ascot Races) as well as clothing for herself and her family. She enjoys shopping and typically purchased a new article of clothing each week. 

As we talked through her typical day she kept coming back to the problem that she had with clothes organization—she had loads of clothes in her closet and lots of jewelry in pots around the house, but she wasn’t aware of half of what she had. 

She also values upcycling, re-selling and donating old items of clothing when she no longer needs them.

I used an interview guide to craft the conversation with her and asked open ended questions (“Who, What, Where, When, Why”) so as to allow any problems and issues to surface naturally.

She wanted some way of cataloging all that was in her wardrobe as well as a means to have fun creating outfits and be able to easily repurpose items when she didn’t want them anymore. Her closet felt like this on left when she wanted it to feel more organized:

So I came up with a problem statement to frame her needs around the above and began developing a storyboard and a series of concept maps to explore solutions.

• The concept maps allowed me to dig further into the problem but still stay in the high level of ideas before heading into sketches and flows.

• Through the concept mapping, we determined that the most logical place to start was the user flows for how to “add an item” into an online closet and then how to “create outfits” from that item.

I went away and started sketching out possible screens at a high level—using just boxes, lines, circles, etc. with little text—to explore the flow of ideas as she would try to pursue the goal of adding an item in the app.

I used post-its to map key steps and move them around and checked in with Yinka periodically in the process to iron out key steps to help the flow feel more natural.

Once we were comfortable with the flow for this goal and how to create an outfit. I developed a first round of screen iterations to match the flows. This brought up further discussion with Yinka about what we could put on the homepage. She requested that the option to repurpose an article of clothing, or jewelry, be included

in the homepage along with the other key goals of adding items and viewing her closet. Further screen iterations allowed me to refine the steps further and add text where appropriate to clarify key steps.

At this point in the process, I noted key insights on what I was learning from concept mapping, user flows and iterations as well as the feedback I got from Yinka. 

 I noted that it’s important to not rush through the process to developing features and to spend time ensuring that I understand the problem and the pain points well.

For my last round of screen iterations, I documented them on paper and then uploaded the screens into Marvel App to create my prototype.

 I named my app “Glow” (get up and glow!) to encapsulate the feeling that my user wants to have through using my app.

As a next step for Glow app, I intend to explore creative ways that I can incorporate options for Yinka to repurpose unwanted items in her wardrobe — through upcycling, selling or donating online. 

I also want to review the competition apps more and include an analysis of what could work or not in my app, from how they approach similar problems. Looking forward to this next challenge!