Concept and research documentation: Mobile Application Design Adam Condell

To my very busy female friend I proposed a mobile app which could organise your wardrobe photographically. Also providing a way to preview how these clothes would look as well as providing suggestions based on weather, season and event. On top of that I suggested that the app could provide suggestions outside of your collection that could work with your selected items. To all these suggestions she said "Yes! I would buy that, that's exactly what I need!"

My concept is an application for mobile devices which helps organise and categorise your clothing. Also to provide a way to manage and demo potential styles of wear with suggestions and templates based on season, current fashion trends and personal tastes. It will also provide a new feed/blog reader that aims to keep the user informed of trends and allow the user to access and sample those suggestions via an Avatar. The demoing Avatar will be a core component of this application. The application also seeks to be simple enough for entry level tech users to pick up and use with in seconds. Proposed Components Are: Photographic record/Inventory System: storing and easily displaying photographs of your clothing either taken by the user or from an image database Graphical Avatar: to which clothing sets can be visually applied providing a demo of how the clothing combination will look. News Feed: on trending fashion and topics related to the users taste. Data could be collected from the users typical choice of clothing. Template Manager: a way for users to store looks, apply/ download suggested looks and possibly set reminders or timed events so that certain looks are available for certain days of the week or when a certain event is on.

Demographic/Questioning In my design I have questioned various people to find: a. A target demographic and b. Determine what specific features/requirements they might have. Statistics of my questions will be contained in an separate document . The primary market for such an app was found to be Females aged 18-30. Qualitative reason found that they had the technology, time management requirements and wardrobe size to make such an app useful. Qualitative questioning on what people wanted in a colthing/wardrobe management app revealed a few key notes. Mostly a focus on a simple interface, easy way to switch between and create new styles. A way to keep up to date on current trends and preview popular styles. What they didn't want was large amounts of text data thrown in their face and didn't want to be overloaded with hundreds of options. This would indicate a highly graphical and simplistic environment, with detailed information available as an option. Also an intuitive way to look up styles and articles and apply them to a template.

From this I've developed the concept of a Category and Tag system. Where a piece of clothing will be allocated to one category eg.Pants, Shirt, Shoes. And then given various tags to allow a user to search for the item by specifics like colour, season, brand. With this, in the context of an item's display page it will show Title of the item, image, along with the various tags attached to it, following that an optionally viewable description or a stylist remarks on the item. From here you can use the tags to find similar items. With this tag and associating mechanic I propose a Match Mode , where you can find various styles and out fits that might work with a particular selection of clothing. For example what if someone has found a particular shirt they want to wear and want to see what it would look good with. In Match Mode it would check off the Shirt category and search for shoes, pants, jackets and accessories with tags of "casual" "night wear" "autumn" and possibly other discreet tags. This will allow it to find other, hopefully relevant clothing to go with it. The item results would then be displayed in lists by category. I propose each item will have a preview button/check box that will allow you to instantly view the item in a pop-up of your avatar. I also though a time/event system would be good and got positive feedback when I brought it up. Basically it would suggest a style template based on calendar events you set as well as by seasonal and weather context. Layout

Title page will feature 3 panes/buttons at the moment, assuming the screen is viewed in portrait mode Pane One will assume the top half of the screen, Pane Two and Three will be in the bottom half of the screen divided vertically. Pane One will feature news, blog feeds and alarm/event information. Probably leave it up to the user to decide what content they want displayed here. Tapping this pane will expand it revealing the News/blog/personal events page. Pane Two will feature the Avatar with a title of its style template. The style displayed will either be the last used template or an event triggered/alarm selected template. It will also display an indication of the weather forecast including temperature. Tapping this pane will expand the Avatar window to full screen. Pane Three will essentially be an animated button taking you to the Inventory/Match Mode screen. It will feature a montage of various clothing items pulled from the inventory list. When tapped it and other elements will fade to black and the inventory system will be faded in. Device Context Menu will feature settings button, and an 'about us' which will show a dialogue with developer details.

The Avatar possibly the key component of the application. For concept purposes the avatar will be represented by a chibi style anime character. -note: this section ignores research data and opts for my personal taste. In this case I'm that company that despite wanting a quality product has a series of counter intuitive design demands. Clothing will be attached to the avatar via category labelled inventory slots similar to a western RPGs equipment screen. The system will be limited to one item per category with the exception of the jacket/vest slot and the accessories slot which will have a finite number of layers which can be applied. At this point the categories are Torso, Legs, Shoes, Jackets, Accessories. These categories will correlate and interact with the categories of the Inventory system. This screen will feature template selection and route to the Inventory system to select pieces of clothing. Tapping on an equipment slot will bring up that category in the Inventory screen with last, most used and items relevant to the rest of your outfit by default. Templates will be selectable from a simple menu that drops from the top of the page. The Avatar screen of a template will feature an Event button which will allow you to add event properties such as "daily wear rotation" "wedding" "friends party" or what ever you want to name it. This can be given a specific date or recurring attribute. This will then apply to your Avatar at the specified time/interval. A specifically dated template will override recurring templates. Match Mode/Inventory After talking with my friend a bit about simplifying my design I decided to combine the two ideas along with an online database of clothing. The personal inventory will be the default view filtered by an "Owned" tag allowing you to first search through your items, then chose to view a large database of potential options. The will be organised by Category(torso, legs, feet ect.), Tag or view by Template. The exact layout of the system would be developed further down the line. But it would feature the Category and Template option, under that choice it will display a stream of relevant items as tiles in a sort of grid. These tiles will feature a check box you can tick to either add to a template short list or directly to your current avatar. News Feed this screen will show panels of fashion tips and featured styles. Some of these feeds will have style templates attached which you can preview and save.

Of course I haven't detailed every single aspect of the application design, but this covers the main flow and behaviours of the application and what it aims to provide the user. Amendment: After talking through with a friend who's doing mobile app design professionally, we reasoned that events would be better kept as part of the Avatar system and have it as the primary pane

The initial concept ideas for this app developed after various qualitative suggestions and talk back with my friend who works for a web and app design company. My initial idea was that of an ironic 70's fashion guide, following with the Australian nostalgia prompt but Australia doesn't really have a nostalgia that I associate with, at least not until modern cultural development especially now. These days we give an unprecedented amount of attention to the styles/ fashions that have preceded us, especially from British/American history . Attached to the retro fashion guide was my fashion organiser app. I figured in a way clothing represents nostalgia, I also suggested my attached idea of a clothing preview system in which this took precedent. I came up with various ideas surrounding how the app could potentially be presented. After further deliberation we came up with the following, simple tally system to determine a demographic preference for the look layout and features included/ approval of proposed ideas.

Questionnaire results from 14 females and 6 males taken out side clothing stores in Bourke Street mall. Colour Scheme: Dark: 13 xxxxxxxxxxxxx Light: 7 xxxxxxx Colour: Monochrome: xxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxx

Would you like a news feed/ style guide?(Y/N/M) Y: 8 xxxxxxxx N: 5 xxxxx M: 5 xxxxxxx Would you like a event timer system?(Y/N/M) Y: 15 xxxxxxxxxxxxxx N: 1 x M: 5 xxxxx Would you like to add notes to your templates?(Y/N/M) Y: 12 xxxxxxxxxxxx N: 1 x M: 7 xxxxxxx Would you like to view items besides your personal inventory eg.fashion database? (Y/N/M) Y: 11 xxxxxxxxxxx N: 3 xxx M: 6 xxxxxx

Layout detail: Simplistic: 18 In Depth: 2 Visual: Text: Lists: Objects: 16 4 3 17

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxx xxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Avatar layer Options: Many: 6 xxxxxx Concise: 14 xxxxxxxxxxxxxx 06/14