UI Design Concept

Because ASOS product has variety of colour, print, patterns and fabric texture, the app ui design that display such dynamic fashion photo will have to be simple and easy to recognise. 

The hipster style of black and white (grey), design treatment with minimal lines and shapes give a trendy yet clean environment for the target audience to browse through their fashion inspiration easily.
Below is one of the sample hipster graphic style guide board I found online.

Hipster graphic style reference

My app design - colour palette and testing with ASOS fashion item side-by-side

D&AD New Blood Winner Entries Analysis

All of the winning work, submitted video demo presentation with approximately 1 minute duration. Not all of the entries supply with poster image. 

One of the best entry format: Clear video concept, the submission of visual montage successfully explain the use case of the project. Link

From my observation, the winning works doesn't really have very detail information architecture and ui connectivity. The shared common points are the innovation and behaviour changing concept that reflected ASOS aim in connecting the target audience with the feature of mobile network. The usage of camera function allowing them to publish themselves into the social media channels every now and then. ASOS products will need to be featured with the look and feel that is in line with the ASOS brand and aesthetic. It must be viewable on a smartphone. But it’s not a must to actually create an app or site, but must clearly show how it would work, look and feel. 

From the direction of how the judges define winning work, I will need to produce a clear summary of the reasoning behind my idea and creative solution in answering the brief. The submission of research references and/or moodboards will help to explain my creative solution. A clear presentation of understanding of the proposed user experience is also an important criteria for the award judging process.

The Big Idea [ Fashion Blender ]

The Mobile App will serve as a remix platform for the fashion lovers to break apart street style fashion items around them and recreate style from there. This app is location aware. With the statistic of users collection of items at different locations, the recommendation of style will be prioritize depends on the statistic collected. Since ASOS product position aim at UNISEX level, the possibilities of mixture and blending to recreate style will enable more fashion possibilities for both male and female audience. The recommendation system allows personalized setting to create variety of inspiration. User can also set the blending modes provided in the app for customized recommendation content. Every style found will be labelled with product info and
price to allow a easy online purchase for the consumer.

Target Audience - Hipster

After observing ASOS's fashion style and the trending colours, it has very strong character. Instead of formal and neat, most of the time, ASOS target audience appeared to be bold and daring, adventurous in choice of colour, texture and material. They reflect the hipster behaviour of being different.

Then I did some research on the "Hipster" fashion attitude and behaviour. The style and personality of hipster. I found these resources online:


The Evolution of the Hipster from 2000 - 2009

Hipster Fashion Cycle:

The 2 info diagram above helps me to see the pattern in the Hipster culture. I decided to use the different stages of Hipster fashion cycle to represent the level of Blend in the app. The strongest contrast mixture of content will be the Outsider who felt bored with the conservative fashion and wants to break away from the norm. 

In the Fashion Blender app, user can set their adventure level to allow the dynamic data management system suggest to them the outfit mixture. 

Competitor Analysis [function benchmark]

Olapic
https://www.olapic.com

#DynamicContent
With the advanced technology in visual content display and dynamic integration of user generated content, Olapic enable brands to be recognized in users’ everyday photos. The dynamic content display enable better brand appearance and business opportunity for new customers to see their products and purchase it.

Some of the key features of Olapic
1. Collect:
a. Automatically gather relevant photos from Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Vine and Tumblr

2. Curate:
a. Easily approve on brand photos
b. Collect directly from users via site, email and mobile

3. Display:
a. Showcase customer photos within product detail pages, galleries, Facebook pages, email campaigns and elsewhere
b. Customize to match and enhance your online presence
c. Integrate into your chosen ecommerce platform

4. Measure:
a. Track performance with clear and comprehensive sales and engagement metrics

ASOS - Client Study

From the official channel of client's online presence, ASOS has shown it's dynamic design look to suits the current fashion trend. One of the 3 major sections of ASOS.com, fashionfinder, is a section where target audience gets fashion inspiration and tips. 

I also created a pinterest board to record the past design appearance of ASOS mobile app. Some of them shows the graphic style, colour mode, some shows the content architecture and some show's it's promotional design in order to look appealing to the audience.

D&AD New Blood Award - ASOS, Restyle Street Style

To fulfill CFE Module requirement of project outcome which is to demonstrate the ability of creative ideas development, having contextual awareness through digital media practices, and emergent technologies and technical contexts, the chosen competition brief is carefully studied. Among the competition briefs I came across, New Blood Award by D&AD is the most suitable option for me, as it is designed with specific client needs, branding position, well measured objectives that allow students to show case their creativity in order to solve the communication problem stated. Besides that, there are many client briefs within the New Blood category, range from fashion, product to services. For my case, I’ve chosen ASOS’s brief. The reason my that decision is due to the nature of that sets their target audience of the future generation of global 20somethings who are permanently connected and live on their digital devices. This has given chance to work on rich experience design for such target audience at the same time explore the creative opportunity in the social and creative content display. Furthermore, the requirement from the brief has heavier weight on the creative idea communication and the innovation of media technology instead of the completion of artwork. With the estimated working hours available in CFE module, this brief allows more time for creative strategy development and user experience design without the burden of artefacts completion. So this brief fulfil the project requirement completely.