The Design-a-thon hosted by Design@UCI is an annual 3-day long event where teams design a product prototype based on a theme. This year’s theme was “You Belong Here”, revolving around the theme of community and inclusivity. The event began on February 24 starting at 5:30 pm PST and ended on February 26th at 8:00 PM PST.
Design your own digital application that fosters community and celebrates inclusivity.
Some ideas to consider to facilitate a deeper ideation process:
When thinking about user needs, at first, we were inspired by the movie Clueless to design an app that will help people choose their outfits of the day (OOTD). However, we wanted to find a way to connect it more to the theme of community and inclusivity, so we began thinking about how we could better connect people who are interested in fashion.
Screenshot from the movie Clueless featuring the Mis-match computer program.
We turned to thinking about where people typically get outfit inspiration from and realized that many people often look to social media apps, such as Instagram, VSCO, and Pinterest for inspiration. We then thought about what prevents people from posting their outfits on social media, and concluded that the intimidation of likes, followers, insecurities, and peer pressure that often prevented them from doing so. This led us to our idea, Fitography, (fit-tah-graphy), an app that provides a creative space to express your style, inspire, discover, and shop without the harmful need for approval through likes and followers.
We then formed our design question:
How might we design a digital application that fosters community and inclusivity for members of the fashion community?