Bratadah

Problem statement

Women are overburdened by options, frustrated by sizing, and wary of awkward in-store fittings; their online bra purchases need to inspire confidence in their choice of fit, style and comfort.

"Online I always put stuff in my cart but
‍never buy since I am not confident of size."
-Catherine, Age 29

Leading dimensions of the challenge

In person fittings with a stranger are awkward

Users feel uncomfortable with intimate bra-fittings and dislike the try-on process

Users experience frequent body changes

Users feel anxious around changes in bra size (monthly, with age, motherhood, and weight)

Users want a bra to be comfortable, fit well and be stylish

However accept the disappointing reality of getting 2 out of the 3 factors

Users are uncertain about their size

And frequently don't understand how sizing works

Make and materials are important factors in purchasing

Users desire in depth information on fabric, underwire, padding feel, and longevity

Bras suffer from size inconsistency

Users are frustrated with sizing inconsistency across brands

A side bar fitting process that tracks users answers and lets the user expand explanations as they want.

"It was a much more relaxing experience than I was expecting based on the small information I was primed with. It wasn't stressful, or all the normal emotions I associate with bra shopping."
- Rivka, Age 28

Key elements to the solution

Users wanted the process to be fast

They enjoyed a fast and navigable fitting experience

Users liked their answers displayed

Having their answers displayed provided reassurance that the recommendations were for them

Users wanted be shown less recommendations

They trusted the recommendations less when they saw so many "perfect fits"

Help System

Redesign to make it more noticeable

"We Know You"

Redesign summary page incorporating style preferences

Trust to Purchase

Users wanted to see their size to purchase

Guiding design principles for model fitting experience

Shared Language

Align on a visual language and tone of voice that builds transparency and confidence in trust and fit.

Sleek and Simple

Design clean, clear and intuitive user flows to reduce choice paralysis.

Worth It

Create an easy, convenient, informative space that is inclusive of each customers’ experience, preference and choice.

Encouraging creativity and pushing the boundaries on each idea

I chose 6-8-5 sketching and focused on creating a delightful online experience. On Mural, we combined ideas and selected the 3 most feasible in addition to conducting a mashup session. Mashup allowed us to use constraints to think outside of the box in generating ideas. We used Mural to sort through and present our many ideas.

Solving with a brand-able experience, a highly visual one and an information driven one

As we worked in Mural, we organically began to snip and rearrange portions of ideas in order to land at our novel concepts.

Tadah

A large scale diagram guiding questions

Close-up

A magic inspired card based questionnaire

Sidebar

A vertical scrolling sidebar tracking progress

Testing showed sidebar a clear winner

Assumptions

Findings

Users want a more visual experience
Users want a lot of explanation
Users want it to feel personalized
Users want colloquial writing

Users responded strongly to the greeting and feeling of human connection
The ordering of the questions was important, size and other potentially sensitive questions should be asked after easy warm up ones
Users wanted to be guided into the process and know what they were going to be doing
Users were confused if the questions were about the bra they wanted or the bra they were currently wearing

Hallway testing interactions to offer more information

Users wanted the "why" but didn't respond well to the 3 formats presented during divergent concept testing. I pushed to iterate and test for more ways for users to learn more.

Option A

Option B

We quickly interviewed 10 users across ages 20-64. Users positively responded evenly between Options B and C.

Option C offered a clean design which users responded to and was in line with our clients aesthetics. Option B was well understood across ages. With more time, I would have further tested these two options with varying coloration because a lot of users didn’t like the initial look.

Option D

Option C

“Feels like going into a
small boutique and being fitted by a real human and not a robot.”
- Alaina C. Age 26

Design adjustments

Style selections

Adding the brands visual to create a stronger connection to the experience
Providing clarity with both the image of the bra with the name of the bra style
Move the explanation to a higher point to increase the likelihood of user reading
When the why interaction isn't available build in the brands value proposition
Provide feedback and track users answers

Fit selections

Add help and explanations that users can elect to use
Move the explanation to a higher point to increase the likelihood of user reading
Users wanted a greater emphasis of the issues in the images
Offering further explanation on the fit descriptors to guide the user to selecting the closest fit
Affordances on the range bar were made more obvious

Recommendations page

Users wanted to know their answers were being used, so we added a display of their answers with their recommendations
To give users more information we provided two views of the bras available, just their recommendations and all the bras
Added a signifier that the shown bra item was a recommended selection
Provide a way for users to filter the bras that are their fit

Annotated wireframes for future development

I annotated the wireframes for the future team to implement the web fitting experience.

Annotating the website wireframe to properly explain each click interaction.

To layer a deep understanding of all the design intentions within the mobile experience.

Preparation for easy client hand-off

All deliverables were saved in organized folders and Bratadah was provided with a written guide to locating these within the folder structure on Google Drive.

Interesting insights

Color really affects users - there was a shade of grey we used in the our quick hallway interaction test that I didn't like but I decided it would be fine for such an informal test. Well it turns out that the color was a major issue for our users and it was something they all wanted to comment on.
It was an incredible experience to be an early contributer to Bratadah. I was glad to bring in the perspectives of their users at the beginning of their product cycle.

What I would do differently next time.

I would record all of our zoom meetings with the client. Our notes captured our action items but our client wished to share our exact presentations with her team and we didn't have the verbatim copy and productive question sessions recorded.