Dèja is an app that helps users find wardrobe items they remember seeing (and loving) but had no idea of how to find again. With a series of questions, the Déja app does a detailed search in different e-commerce platforms to find the product they probably saw but totally forgot, whether they saw it in a dream, in the outfit of a TV character or just on a stranger in the street.
Deja es una app que ayuda a los usuarios a encontrar items del guardarropa que recuerdan haber visto (y amado) pero no tienen ni idea de cómo encontrar de nuevo. Con una serie de preguntas, Dèja hace una búsqueda detallada en distintas plataformas de e-commerce para encontrar el producto que probablemente vieron pero olvidaron, así lo hayan visto en un sueño, en el outfit de un personaje de televisión o en un extraño en la calle.
📚 Planning
What should the app do?
Find and suggest clothing items based on a series of questions from the big pool of online retailers.
Give tailored recommendations of products the user might like based on previous searches.
For each product, make a comparative chart showing the user extra facts about the product, to help make an informed purchase.
Allow the user to browse popular search ideas from other users in the platform.
App Goals
1. Build a sleek and easy to use questionnaire for the app items search.
2. Help small retailers with tailored choices be seen.
3. Make the clothing market easier to navigate and search with basic knowledge.
4. Create a business model that benefits all users.
🧐 Potential roles that are part of the user target group
Young women in a corporate field that need/want to dress well.
Young school/university fangirls of singers and artists that want to find what their idols wear and get it.
Senior men/women trying to rebuild a previous wardrobe they had with hard to get items.
Young men/women involved in the fashion industry building a personal style: Persons working in the fashion industry, as editors, writers, photographers, models or any other part of the field that care about personal image and get very specific ideas of items they would love to add for special moments or specific work events/photo shoots, in need of a quicker solution than searching by hand on online platforms and in person stores.
📈 Approach to the business model
Dèja would be a platform created with indie brands, small retailers and resellers in mind, since many of the items the users would be looking for in the app could be from past seasons or fashion eras, making the items harder to find in regular stores. Having this in mind, I defined the two main stakeholders that would make this app possible.
Small/indie brands and resellers
A close relationship with sellers would be key to be able to offer customers the special items the app would suggest. This relationship could be established through access to their inventory and a small fee charged for each item sold.
Wiki and fandom websites, pop culture blogs
The information about items wore on TV/movies and by famous persons would come from existent Wikis created by fandoms and all other sorts of fan-made content. The app could either have direct contact with the Wiki providers, or with the fandoms and content creators that populate them.
🪄 Design Process
Sitemap
To understand how the parts of the app would be arranged, I created a sitemap that sums up all screens and functions that would be considered.
Wireframes
Then I made a first approach to how the content would be arranged inside each screen with a set of wireframes that consider all feed screens as just one, instead of the 3 ones that would be required
Moodboard
The look & feel of the app goes along with the Dèja name, that comes from the french expression dèja-vu (already seen), and considers magic, crystals and occultism as color palette and aesthetic inspiration.
⚡ Final result
Dèja is an app that allows users to search for clothing items they’ve previously seen somewhere with special tag search features and 3 different kinds of feeds, allowing the user to explore fashion recommendations through different methods
Main search feature
Adding global features the users remembers about the item he’s searching, the app creates a tags cloud to choose from, generating a series of related results to browse
Different kinds of feeds for different kinds of memory
The user can either use the advanced search feature, or browse items in a broader way using the tag generated feed that showcases items grouped by keywords
Single item pages
After the user finds the item he was looking for, he can visit the single item page that has more information about the item and a button to purchase it, in case it’s still being sold. He can also add the product to the library by clicking on the heart icon on the right.
🌟 Conclusions
While working on this project I had many issues deciding which style to follow, since I had a really clear idea of what would the app do but I didn’t want to fall on the usual stereotypes that surround any fashion themed project. With that in mind, I tried to go out of my comfort zone by choosing a dark theme aesthetic and working with references I wouldn’t normally work with, and I really ended up liking the end result.