The Hanger
Personal Project inspired by a real world product.
My Role: UX Designer
Tools: Miro, Adobe XD
Timeline: Aug - September 2020 (4 Weeks)
Deliverables: Research Findings, Wireframes, High Fidelity Mockups
Team: Me, Myself and I
About The Hanger
For shopaholics, by shopaholics; The Hanger is a social platform for people and brands to connect closer than ever before. Leveraging on the power of social media, The Hanger aims to create an experience of discovery, inspiration and commerce like never before.
Context of Project
The Hanger is a self-inspired project with the purpose of exercising UI/UX skills and also for expanding my portfolio. The concept of the app was inspired during my hunt for a UX Design internship where I came across a startup that had a similar idea. Whilst I was rejected for the internship, I chose to base my next case study to revolve around that concept.
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The following case study is my attempt of delving into the minds of the startup's mind and finding the problem they were attempting to solve, while trying to create a brand at the same time.
Challenge Statement
To investigate the feasibility and desirability of a social-media centric fashion ecommerce product and discover if such an idea fills a gap in the current ecommerce industry.
The Approach
Initial Brainstorming
Before conducting any form of user research, I wanted to find out if there were any applications that had a similar concept. The closest application to a social-media centric ecommerce concept was
Instagram Shops
Instagram Shoppable Posts
Through researching the Instagram Shop app, I found two opportunities which could possibly make the shopping experience better.
1. Allowing everyone, rather than verified brands or influencers to post 'shoppable posts' so as to build greater trust in user reviews from shoppers. By featuring real products on real people, a more authentic discovery and shopping experience can be created.
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2. Instead of bringing customers to an external link during the purchase of a product, allow for in-app purchases. This not only creates a more seamless shopping experience, but also can allow brands to have more control over their in-app store.
Research
With the knowledge of Instagram Shops, I proceeded to conducting user interviews to gain insight on how people currently approach online shopping, and also their opinions regarding social-media centric ecommerce
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A total of 8 user interviews have been conducted with 3 main research objectives in mind.
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What are their usual online shopping behaviors?
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Does social media influence their online shopping?
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What are their 0pinions of a social-media centric ecommerce platform
Survey Questions
Findings
Through the user interviews, multiple patterns emerged regarding online shopping and how interviewee's perceived social-media centric ecommerce.
1. 80% of interviewee's prefer shopping on an app rather than on a website.
Users lamented on how they preferred shopping on a dedicated phone application rather than on websites both on their desktops, or phones.
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Top reasons for their preferences include: Convenience, Accessibility and Ease of navigation
"I find it easier to navigate on phone apps compared to websites. On the phone app, they allow you to continuously scroll through a section of items, eg dresses, but on their website, they separate it into different pages. its not much of a difference, but being able to continuously scroll feels better than having to click to the next page."
2. Social media provides as a source of inspiration for online shopping.
Users find themselves getting inspired either by brands or other users whenever they hop onto social media platforms such as Facebook or Instagram.
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While Social media platforms are for discovery, the subsequent steps users take would be to log onto the respective websites or search online for reviews regarding the item they are interested in to get a better understanding before purchase.
Whenever I see something i like on instagram, i Will not usually ask the person directly. However, i would check it out if they had tagged the online store/use the search function on apps like Taobao to look for the item.
3. Users prefer a more authentic and personalized social-media online shopping experience.
While most interviewees liked the idea of a social media-centric ecommerce application, when asked about Instagram Shops, most had negative opinions about it.
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This discrepancy in opinion can be explained through user sentiment where there is a need for
Separation of Utility.
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While most users view Instagram as a way to create a personal connection with one another by sharing moments in the lives, they feel that shoppable Instagram posts steers away from the original intent of what Instagram should be.
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Hence, one crucial insight that can be derived from the interviewee's clashing opinions of Instagram shops and a social media-centric ecommerce application would be that a more authentic and personalized experience would be more welcomed.
I think Instagram shops feel like posts being disguised as ads. I really get very irritated whenever i see such posts because even though i follow certain brands on instagram for their products, i feel that they are kind of hard selling me whenever they have a shoppable post.
User Persona
Insights from the user research gave a greater understanding of the target user. I created a persona to capture the goals and pain points of the user. This persona will be crucial in helping us make better design decisions to satisfy our user needs.
Research Summary
Recapping on the research objectives, the series of user interviews have provided the following overarching insights :
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1. Interviewees tend to use mobile applications for their ecommerce needs.
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2. Social media plays an influential role in the exploratory phase of a person's online shopping journey.
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3. The concept of a social media-centric ecommerce mobile app is viable and fills a gap in the existing industry.
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In addition, from the research, I came to the conclusion that for a social media-centric ecommerce app to be accepted and successful, it needs to be
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Authentic and Personalized.​
Ideation
During the Ideation phase, I aimed to keep the following concepts as salient as possible.
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1. Accessibility
2. Ease of use
3. Authenticity
4. Being able to Personalize
Information Architecture
After the Ideation phase, I then came up with an Information Architecture to figure out how to structure the and include the ideated features into the flow of the app
Wireframing
I then sketched out how the various screens of the app and transferred them over to AdobeXD. This help me visualize the entire structure of the app.
Branding
The origin of the name 'The Hanger' was inspired by the theme of fashion and personalization. The name aims to act as a metaphor to encapsulate the concept of both a wardrobe and apparel store where hangers are key for storing and showing off clothing.
High Fidelity Usability Testing
I then conducted 4 usability tests to test the main functions of the app.
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1. Onboarding
2. Finding a piece of clothing from a user post
3. Find out what is in the 'wardrobe' of another user
4. Tag an item in your own photo
All tasks except task 3 were easy to complete. I attributed this flaw to the low visibility of the wardrobe in the user profile page. Hence, I came up with an alternative design to improve visibility of the Wardrobe feature.
Final Designs
Personalize.
Link your Instagram account and Choose who and what to see.
Get Inspired.
Inspire and be inspired by your peers as you post
Fill your Wardrobe.
Show what you have on your hangers by tagging them in your photos and displaying them in your profile
Reflections
When setting out to do this project, I felt that having a clear direction was very important for an efficient workflow. This whole project took quite awhile as I was initially unclear on how to frame and tackle the issue at hand as this was not a real product and it was thus difficult to create something from scratch.
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While this app concept may seem like little, I have many ideas on how to expand on it but did not have the time nor was it in the scope for the project as it steers more toward business development.
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Nevertheless, I really enjoyed coming up with a fake product and I have a new found respect to designers who manage to come up with well designed applications that feel good to use.