UpGarm - The Home of Reworked Fashion

A marketplace that brings together buyers and talented artisans who rework clothes and accessories. UpGarm’s ethos is rooted in changing the way we consume fashion and promoting longevity of our existing clothes.

Challenges:

App has to fulfil the users need and convert them from browsers to buyers. As well as be used by Artisans to list, sell and dispatch orders.

Introducing users to the ‘Custom Order’ feature which is unique to Upgarm and not familiar to many e-commerce apps and platforms. 

Research

User Interviews

I conducted user interviews who shop with other competitors such as Depop, Vinted, eBay and fell within the target audience for Upgarm.

Initial reactions of users who only knew the basics of the app:

• Why does it say ‘exhibit’ at the top 

• User tilted head to read vertical text 

• Couldn’t locate products partially due to correct imagery not being on products 

• Bag is typically known as your basket so current bag icon should be a search icon 

• Sign up page is nice, users didn’t like the different size imagery, felt that text should be the same feels like an overload makes it difficult to distinguish importance

• User Journey/ Navigation is a bit of a maze and complicated if I wanted to do a custom order etc.

Wireframes - App

Competitor Analysis

Taking on this project one of the initial things I did was research other competitors app. In this case the direct competitors were Depop, Vinted and indirect competitors were other shopping apps used by the Target Market such as Asos, UO, Ebay, Hurr.

Key Findings (my analysis off the current app)

Custom Order: This is one of the key features and the user journey should maybe be cut to a limit of 4/5 very easy to follow steps, guidance along the way.

The USP of Upgarm is offering customisations on clothing so this had to be integrated into the customer journey in the most simplistic way to not overwhelm or confuse customers with a new unique feature.

• Search bar needs to be on the bottom for easy access (to hard to find) 

• Switch the ‘What’s Up’ and make it larger to the top and the featured artisan at the bottom because the what’s up caught my eye first

• Same size images for the images on the ‘What’s up’ row (understood now it’s not conventional)

• Basket or Shop icon needs to be bigger and positioned on the right of the screen?

• ‘Buy’ icon without the grey infill (signature colours need to be incorporated)

• Custom order form needs to be smaller text and text boxes rounded or less thick (see vinted) If I didn’t know that was a feature may be hard to understand?!?

• Checkout page/ basket? 

• Strongest brand identity was conveyed through the login pop up and the tile slide on the home page. Tile is consistent throughout and gives a consistent brand identity between the social media, website and app. 

• More use of brand colours throughout the app and the double text not sure about how aesthetic it looks. 

• Just stick to two fonts on the whole app -  The handwriting font and the font used on the blog page. 

• Don’t need the featured artisan because you have the what’s up can go in that slide deck?

• Unify All sign in screens, meaning use all brand colours consistently throughout so sign in, sign up and custom order screens all look similar(ish). 

• On the intropage/ splash use the thin branding colour box underneath pop up

Screens from original UpGarm App that was used to conduct user interviews.

Reflection

On completion of the app, looking back, I would have liked to carry out user testing to observe the journey and see if there are any barriers that hinder their experience. Any quick changes could be made in order