Hope project page

Brave

for Hope

Research and UX Design

For the data and strategy module at Hyper Island, our class had the opportunity to work with Swedish fashion brand Hope. Teams of five each developed their own solution to the brief.

Challenge:

Develop a method/strategy for designers at Hope to become more data driven in their designs.

A sustainable solution was a top priority for our team. We asked ourselves, "How can designers have more data available at their fingertips to work with?"

Role:

Researcher
UX Designer
Presenter

Hyper Island Stockholm

Data and Strategy

September 2018

Understanding + Insight

The first stages of our project involved intensive research and ideation as a team to understand Hope as a company, the fashion industry and trends which impact fashion design choices such as culture and the environment.

After research, ideation and discussion, our team decided upon two fundamental pillars which inspired our final solution:

Design is related to the way things look and feel rather than quantitative, measurable data. The fashion industry and the movements associated with fashion encompass a variety of cultural influences which are related to people and what inspires us.

Designers seek to reduce their environmental impact they make during their design process by reducing the amount of traveling they do to seek inspiration.

Considering this, we chose to approach both the process of data collection and analysis in a creative way, focusing on qualitative visual data.

Exploring and Defining

Throughout our ideation process, our team member Aya Zahra highlighted the usage of moodboards to spark inspiration while embarking on a creative adventure of designing. We found this to be a strategy which fashion designers use when they are working on their collections.

"How can we create a data driven moodboard for designers?" we asked.

We conducted in depth research on a variety of data points which influence culture and fashion such as climate, architecture, art, music, influencer marketing , etc. We sought out to fuse the process of research and analysis a fashion designer might undergo into one tool that does not involve travel.

"What if there were a tool that can collect real time qualitative data that can inspire Hope designers?"

Design and Develop

By combining forces of our team skills and knowledge, we designed a concept prototype of a moodboard generating tool using real time qualitative data from online sources. The initial concept is an app Hope designers could use internally. It was important for our team to present a long lasting tool to Hope, rather than present them with quantitative data points they can reference one time only. We wanted our solution to bring qualitative real time data into the creative process. And so ...

BRAVE

was born.

Brave: a prototype of an internal app which can be used by Hope to generate mood boards based on images posted on Instagram/Pinterest/etc that fall under categories which the designers can customize themselves.

The collections of mood boards serve as a method of delivering inspiration for the company and their designs. Instead of traveling to respective locations to observe and find inspiration, the data is available at their fingertips internally.

The categories for each mood board generated chosen may be architecture, night life, art, etc. After selecting categories, the app then presents images posted by micro-influencers; the designers then select their top choices to be included in a mood board. They can also choose the location of where the images are tagged.

The designers can save, edit, merge, etc., their created moodboards.

This way, when seeking inspiration, the designers have the option to not travel and use a convenient tool made with data by their potential market audience to generate inspiration boards when they are thinking of their designs.

*All photos from Instagram profiles of personal friends

Prototype

Video provided by Zain Ahmed

Impact/ Results

This was our first project at Hyper Island. My team and I were excited about our final result. We were the only team to develop a tool and focus on qualitative data rather than quantitative data points. We showed our client a method of how then can use data in their creative process.We learned there may be some difficulties in creating such a tool regarding privacy policies and data laws, however the idea was well received overall.

After our final presentation, our industry leader, Donna Hannafi, commented: "I'M BEYOND IMPRESSED BY THE END RESULT. Hope loved it. The prototype was really clear and easy to follow. I really appreciate the approach you had to this to actually build 'a product' and not just come with data points. You actually showed them how they could be data driven, and have real-time data at their fingertips. I hope you all had fun doing this- it was very rewarding to me to listen to and get so inspired by your creativity."

*Team illustration by Aya Zahra