Crazy House Clothier (Owned by Natasha Parish) opened its digital doors in July 2018 as Bollywood Bows.  It was exclusively a baby girl and momma headgear website that crafted unique designs for fair prices and a great turnaround time.  Despite her initial success, Ms. Parish discovered a need to create original and authentic clothing that cannot be found anywhere else.  However, this created a problem because it would require an education campaign to consumers or a new UX/UI designer to join the team and build a design based on the user's needs/understanding that still meets the operational goals of the owner. 

I joined Ms. Parish in March 2019.  Initially, I met with Ms. Parish to understand her goals and aspirations along with understanding her product format.  Upon my education, I began doing Foundational Primary Research, Foundational Secondary Research, and a Competitive Audit to better understand the current users, market, and possibilities for Ms. Parish and the viability of her new adventure.  Upon this research, I suggested a new Brand Logo, Website, Mobile Site,  and Conditional Logic Ordering System.

Crazy House Clothier offers custom clothing items with unique designs for children as young as infants thru adult sizes.  They have a unique shop format which required a unique design in order to simplify it for the store's users/consumers.

Offering custom clothing on custom designs can be very difficult to simplify for consumers/users that usually do not have that much freedom in choosing the outfits they purchase.  That is where I came into the picture.   Using user feedback design from her established customer base, I built a responsive website design with a customized approach which lets users know the style of print and then can pick the exact outfit style they want with any accessories they desire.  Based on design research and owner funding, I was able to create a ordering system that was able to meet both the user and owner needs while keeping it within budget.

CHC has seen immense success over the past 3 years and projections show continued growth for the next fiscal year.

The research done in late 2021 made it apparent that returning and first-time consumers of the website/mobile site need a mobile app that is standalone and separate from the mobile site.  89% of her users are mobile shoppers and the mobile website is limited in its own innovation capabilities.  This has caused pain points that inadvertently hurt sales on returning customers and completely destroy the prospects of future sales for first-time customers.

Luck has it, I began the Google UX Design Certification program and needed a project to work on that would be added to my portfolio.  I began a full UX/UI design project on building a CHC Mobile App.

Ms. Parish agreed to award a $25 shop gift card for participants assisting with interviews and providing us with their insights.

Completing interviews allowed me to fully understand the most common personas that tend to visit Crazy House Clothier.  Upon taking notes after re-watching the interviews, I was able to craft journey maps of common tasks, feelings, and opportunities for improvement.  I presented these to Ms. Parish and she was very impressed and agreed with the four primary Personas, but was shocked by the Gregory (Edge Case).  She knows that the majority of her clients are Mothers in some capacity, but there were some male shoppers looking for themselves.  These allowed me to illustrate to the owner that Gregory represents a group of shoppers that explore her shop and we missing on due to the lack of awareness.

Ms. Parish always had a healthy relationship with other similar shops and she does a lot of collaborations to cross-pollinate their customer base.  However, she never truly looked at what they did well and what they needed to address.  Providing a complete review of her most common associates helped her realize that there is opportunity in their gaps and also that some may not be viable for a continued relationship and her efforts/time should be focused elsewhere. 

Before drawing up Paper Wireframes, focusing on the storyboards of what users will go thru will help me and the owner develop empathy into the users approach to CHC.  Crafting from the user side is key to making things easier and successful for both the owner and consumer. 

This user flow was crafted back when the website was made and I re-upped it with the owner before continuing down the mobile app development.  To insure that all aspects are followed and nothing is missed, I worked with the owner to craft a User Flow from a user accessing the store's website/mobile site thru paying for an order and the subsequent notifications/items they received afterwards.  This helps me in wireframing and prototyping on the mobile app.

Coming up multiple examples is key for diversifing the ideas and ways to structure the new mobile app. 

Using the user flow, I crafted digital wireframes from the chosen items that the owner liked on the paper wireframes and other aspects I supported based on the user feedbacks, personas, and journey maps.  The owner liked he basic layout and wanted to proceed forward.  Before we did, I wanted pursue usabliity studies on these designs to make sure we are not wasting our time and money on a design that wasn't feasible for the user.

To ensure a tangible outcome is obtained from the usability study, I crafted some research parameters to follow in order to save time and money for the owner and meet the verification/review needs of the Prototype.  Both monitored qualitative and unmonitored quantitative results were collected so we could gain both an empathic view on a micro level and mass accountability on a macro.

Collecting research and applying it in a logical way to the owner is key.  It is important to know your audience and explain things in a way that helps the stakeholders understand why we need to make adjustments.  Based on the results, we needed to edit the navigation, remove pop-ups, and change colors.  All of these were clearly explained and most were supported by the owner. 

In order to illustrate my suggested adjustments and needed changes, i crafted a simple and easy to understand powerpoint presentation which I sent to the owner.  Upon review, she approved nearly all changes except the color change.  As my client and I am focused on the user, I further explained why we needed to do this, but she already had too much invested in marketing to make changes now and thus the color stayed the same.  However, I was able to get her to agree to adjust contrast slightly to make it softer on the eyes.

Final Hi-Fi Mock-Up

In the event of figma embed failing you may click below

https://www.figma.com/proto/PEHAZbybPkL6lYCvhCRLKA/CHC-App-Digital-Wireframes-Hi-Fi?node-id=14%3A208&starting-point-node-id=14%3A208&scaling=scale-down 

(above is the actual presentation hi-fi prototype and may be navigated at your discretion)

During the development, Ms. Parish was consulted during each step of the design process.  The complete breakdown of all steps taken above were presented to Ms. Parish in August 2022.  If she wishes to proceed with the mobile app development then we will research hiring a Developer whom I will work with on making these design become a reality.

As I began my UX Research and UI Design journey, I was assisting Ms. Parish with her business.  I had little training, but a willingness to do research and learn about her customers.  As I was working on my certification and learning about all aspects of UX/UI Designing I learned that I made mistakes in past design decisions.  The most prevalent is the color choices of the company which was my suggestion in the past.  Understanding that the decision was made without user focus caused the owner to invest in marketing with a color choice that some found annoying.  Learning how doing research helps prevents these mistakes is my happiest take away from this Case Study. 

Finally, paying attention to spacing, bumpers, and angles is something I overlooked during this design phase of the Hi-Fi prototype.  Paying attention to a person accessibility is key and learning from this mistake will help me moving forward.

All Information in this portfolio project is owned by Crazy House Clothier and written permission was obtained to showcase this on the site.