Target Audience
Primary: Individuals who frequently travel for business or live in multiple locations
Secondary: Individuals interested in long-term weather planning (e.g., outdoor enthusiasts, farmers).
Market Research
We started our research by looking into the sneaker shopping landscape to see what made currently existing apps successful and what they were lacking, in hopes of finding opportunities we could explore. We found that these apps tend to prioritize trending sneaker releases, making it difficult to find less popular options.
Surveys
Based on what we learned from the market research, we sent out surveys to 38 participants, ranging from monthly sneaker shoppers to annual sneaker shoppers, to find out whether their needs were being met with current apps. We learned the majority of the participants found trends and hype to be an insignificant factor when buying sneakers.
Interviews
To get a more in depth understanding of the user’s needs and pain points, we conducted 11 in person interviews with sneaker enthusiasts. We found that there was a common pattern concerning the difficulty in finding sneakers that meet their standards, with trends being a big factor to these problems.
How do trends affect the sneaker shopping experience?
With apps promoting mainly trending sneaker releases, resellers have been flooding the market strictly to make a profit, killing the chances of regular consumers landing a pair of those sneakers. As the resell prices skyrocket, it becomes a matter of who can afford the sneakers. Having difficulty in finding their ideal sneakers, users want to step away from these trends and have their sneaker shopping experience catered to their preferences.
Persona
Further synthesizing our research, we decided to create a persona to help guide our design approach and empathize with our users.
Brainstorming
After identifying clear pain points and needs, we decided that we could start generating ideas based on these problems. Our group collectively conducted a quick brainstorming session for potential solutions, with our research findings in mind.
Wireframes
Based on some of these solutions, we started generating rough wireframes for the features that seemed more feasible to help visualize these concepts.
Features we explored:
sneaker drop calendar: swipe through previous and upcoming sneaker releases shown by date for that month or year
price comparisons: best prices for each sneaker shown in one place
filtering: filter notifications from upcoming sneaker releases by favorite apps and brands
budget tracking: keeps track of a set budget and suggest sneakers within the price range of the remaining budget
Feedback
To see which ideas users resonated with, we decided to ask 4 sneaker enthusiasts that we previously interviewed for their feedback.
People have stated:
“Other apps already have functions that do these things well”
“I don’t think this would help me find shoes that match my preferences”
“It would be helpful to able to get other opinions on the shoes I want to buy”
Takeaways
While users found that certain features would be essential for the convenience of sneaker shopping, there was generally a negative reaction toward a lot of these concepts. They thought that there were already existing apps that successfully implemented many of our features. Our findings from the feedback helped us realize that:
we are veering away from the main problem of avoiding trends & catering the ideal sneaker.
the inclusion of a social aspect would be helpful for getting information and affirmation on shoes they are interested in.
