I did UX research and UI for designing a mobile application that acts as a platform for sneakerheads where one can buy, sell, clean or customize a sneaker. It also targets non-sneakerheads to get some insight into the sneaker culture, in turn, encouraging them to buy sneakers.
Disclaimer: This is a personal project done for educational purposes. This is a fictional name and is in no association with any existing company under this brand name or identity. This case study is not full-scale as this is a time project and the case study only involves research, and necessary UI screens.
This case study is a design boot camp where we learned to research and design considering a hypothetical situation that can be solved through extensive research.
We as a team contributed to gathering the Assumptions & Hypotheses, the research interviewing and identifying the user pain points, empathy mapping, ideation, validating the gathered data and ideas, designing the UI screens, Initiating the actions, rationalizing, and reviewing the overall work.
1 Problem Statement, 5 Team members, 16 weeks, and lots of learning.
The users of this product will be people who are into buying quality sneakers and sneakerheads. The potential user will be from any age group starting from 13–45 years who are into buying sneakers for sports, casual wear, or as a hobby of collecting sneakers.
In the present situation when a user wants to buy a sneaker he/she has to rely on social media platforms to know the current trends and purchases in a sneaker store or through an e-commerce application that is not exclusive only to sneakers in the Indian market. I decided to understand these struggles faced by a user through interviews and quantitative research.
By interviewing we got to know about how sneakerheads are purchasing sneakers and some of the core problems they face while looking out for a sneaker.
Some common problems faced while buying sneakers were:
- Fewer options to buy from. every sneaker store has different pairs of shoes, when one isn’t available at a store they need to travel to another location even state to buy the pairs they need.
- Authenticated sneakers. while buying a sneaker from online sites they aren’t satisfied with the quality sometimes as they tend to receive fake or defective pairs.
- Lack of service availability for cleaning. They do not have many options to choose from while looking out for a sneaker cleaning service or product around the place they stay
- Lack of knowledge on sneakers, some just follow the hype to get a sneaker.
- There are fewer reselling platforms for sneakers, if one has to search for a specific pair they have to do extensive research to find the seller.
Considering all these real-time problems, we decided to create a whole new experience that is more instinctive and makes the experience and the interface of the application easier for the users.
With the rise of sneaker culture, sneakers are popular with people of all ages, and they often have a high resale value. In addition, the popularity of sneakers has led to a rise in demand for customized sneakers, which can be very profitable.
- We hypothesize that the app should let the users connect with the sneaker community giving them ideas of how sneakers possess a great part in the fashion industry. It also helps the users to get to know in detail the story and culture of sneakers.
- Using the mobile app users will have a wide range of authenticated sneakers to buy or sell from a single platform.
- We hypothesize that the users can use the mobile application to book a cleaning service or to customize a sneaker providing a range of choices of designers and cleaning services.
The sneaker market in India is rapidly growing and presents a significant business opportunity. According to a report by Euromonitor, the Indian footwear market is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 8.2% between 2021 and 2025, with sneakers being a major contributor to this growth.
With these many opportunities in the sneaker business, no platform acts as a mediator from the seller to the user or to resell any sneaker from a collector thus this resulted in an idea for me to move forward with designing a mobile application for selling sneakers based in India.
Cross channels: IOS, Android, Website
General tasks formulated from research for the application
- Buy & Sell
- Shoe care & Customization
- Customization
- Community part
- Real-time market value (Price tracker)
- Calendar dates & releases
Journey Map
With the journey map, I came up with opportunities that can be used at each point the user might feel lost.
User Flow
I then formulated a user flow wireframe keeping all the features I derived to use in my user interface. The app has many features in a single place so I felt not to clutter the user’s decision and ideated every feature (Buy, Custom, clean, and community) each into separate segments for the user easily identify and use his/her desired service upon opening the application.
Card Sorting
Information Architecture
Considering and iterating each point throughout this research I proceeded to design low-fidelity wireframes
Low-fidelity wireframes
High Fidelity Wireframes
Splash Screen
Walkthrough Screens
Once you have completed the walkthrough screens, you should have a good understanding of how the app works and be ready to start using it to its full potential as it has some new features.
Onboarding Screens
Users can create accounts or log in through social network accounts to have access to their data: collections, achievements, and social network community. At the same time, they have a chance to skip this step and go directly to the home page.
Home Screen
The home screen is divided into three parts with a segmented control bar, the main screen is for banners and offers which in turn provides a clean look and then followed by the calendar to view upcoming releases, and finally, a quick deal part to grab offered products in a swift.
Product Page
- The product page is provided with all the details such as the stock price of the sneaker and also the history behind the sneaker. The user could opt to sell the pair and could even cop it.
- All the products are authenticated on the site which is represented by a badge for the products
- The show stats badge is to show the price history stock of the displayed sneaker over the years and also shows the estimated resale value.
Custom Section
The custom part is divided into two sections — customize and clean. Here we can find nearby stores to book an appointment to clean our pairs at home or the store according to the client’s wish, there’s also an option to customize our pair of shoes or any other product by collaborating with the designers available.
Community
The community part is to stay up-to-date with the current sneaker trends and get to know more about the sneaker culture whether the user is a sneaker collector or a casual wearer. This works as a social media page where we could express our views and activities.
Search & Category
Bag & Checkout
Profile
Learnings
This was a new space for me and in the process of designing an app for sneakers, I learned that the sneaker industry business is a vast space and there’s more growth in this space. I built much knowledge about it, this was my first time designing an application UI solo, and this 14 weeks of journey helped me to understand the audience and to design for them.
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