Pride

A customized subscription box catering to transgender people and helping them in their transition process

Client

Class Project

Duration

3 Months

Sep 2019 - Dec 2019

Team

Pournami

Sukruti

Nikita

Ashita

My Role

Research

Idea generation

Wireframing

Visual Design

Tools

Adobe Photoshop

Adobe Illustrator

Adobe Indesign

Premire Pro

Adobe XD

Design an experience that would help transgender people get through their difficult transition process and help build confidence in them.

From our friend, Abby

"I can see how much thoughts have been put into this box. It's amazing. The items in the box are much needed during the transition. And you know, sometimes I feel lost as to what to buy and what not. And I love the personalized measurement because I struggle with it sooo much."

How might we support transgender people during their transition process and make their journey less challenging?

It is a subscription-based personalized care package for a transgender person that can be ordered online.

This care package is meant to support through their transition by discovering their style, understanding the essentials they require and finding a perfect fit for their body type.

Key features

Way to express and support the transition

The subscription box will have a set of items transgender people need to express themselves and support their transition journey.

AI technology helping with more precise measurement

We have added this feature to get their body measurements. They just have to stand in front of the camera and turn. Their precise measurements will be recorded, and we can give them a more accurate fit for their body.

Style Quiz to enhance the customized experience

Our style quiz consists of questions that will help us understand the users' needs by asking them about their style, gender, and preferences. Through this, we want to provide a subscription box with items customized to their needs and style.

To explore the problem, we did some groundwork

Click on the tabs to explore more

Predispositions

Literature Review

Participant Interviews

Photoethnography

Let's begin with what we knew

We read about their fashion needs

Clothing fit for of a transgender person’s body is usually different from mainstream clothing.
This results in ill-fitted clothes affecting their confidence and further causing gender dysphoria.

Understanding pain points through user Interviews

We interviewed 5 transgender individuals and members of our University’s LGBTQ+ Center

"For us, there is a lot of online shopping. We start online because we don’t have to go to a store and say, ‘I want to try this, and that is an easy way to it.”

“I don’t want people to see me only as a ‘trans-woman’ and feel bad for me.”

“To me feminine was high heels, tights, big hair, long fingernails, so when I transitioned, I wanted to dress like that because that hid my masculinity.

Photoethnography to understand their behaviour and environment

To focus specifically on fashion problems, we conducted photoethnography with our friend, Abby. The following pictures were taken where we observed her morning routine.

The insights we gained from this method were about the small yet very necessary needs in a transgender persons life.

Key Insights

1

Fashion is more profound than just their appearance on the outside, it is a channel to express their identity.

2

Gender transition requires the understanding and knowledge of a new body, lack of which can lead to mental stress and discontentment.

3

The existing solutions are expensive; thus, sometimes, transgender persons resort to cheaper options inadvisable by health experts.

4

Pre-conceived notions about binary and non-binary genders results in fear of judgment.

Setting Design Principles to guide design decisions

Defining values through unrestrained
creation of crazy ideas

We brainstormed ideas to solve problems a transgender person might face during and/or after the transition. During this phase, we didn’t want to box ourselves in and thus tried to come up with creative and crazy ideas. We came up with many ideas but chose these because of the values they provide.

Step into my Shoes

Support, Empathy

Confidence Mirror

Confidence, Knowledge

Personal Shopping Space

Knowledge

Narrowing down to design with constraints

Concept #1: DIY Package

The DIY package is a gift from a loved one to a transgender person. It contains fashion activities that need to be carried out by a transgender person and a loved one.

The box also offers a 'body template' that can be used to modify their old clothes to cater to their body needs.

Activities to help test out our concepts

Activity: Styling Hair

Activity: Design Clothes

Result

Awkward conversations

Participants would not like to do the activity again because they did not find it useful

Result

The conversation did not help in learning about fashion

Body template was not that effective to use

Learning from our findings and recognizing opportunities

For each activity, we conducted 6 rounds of testing.  Different participants had different views, but we found some common themes:

Pain Point

Design Opportunity

1.

Body template was neglected during our activity because most users found stitching convoluted and tedious.

Uncomplicating the process of finding well-fitted clothes.

2.

Activities required multiple people to participate. The box resulted in dependency on loved ones.
Making them self-sufficient and independent.


3.

Users preferred not to participate in the activities again as DIY's one-time usage makes the package redundant.  

A concept that can be used over a time period and is beneficial through their transition.

How might we

empower transgender people through a simplified yet highly personalized product to support  them throughout  their transition process?

Pride style box

The Pride Style box is a subscription-based personalized care package for a transgender person that can be ordered online. They would go through a set of questionnaires that would help experts understand their style, body type, needs, and personality.

What does it contain? ⟶

We tested the style box with 4 participants

We asked 4 participants a set of questions and gave them a personalized style box. We followed up with an interview and found that it was well-received. They used words like:

Personalized for me

Simple and Effective

Effortless

Informational

Fun and Engaging

Iterating based on feedback from User testing

Generalized Measurement

People were lost when selecting the size as they did not know what size fits them.

Personalized measurement

This feature will help them take off some cognitive load and give their measurements through technology without worrying about what would fit and what won’t

Complicated interface

To customize the clothes, we needed a slightly abstract interface to visualize how they identify themselves as. This seems to confuse users about what to select.

Simpler interface

We made it a linear bar to make users' decisions easier and select what they relate most to.

Style Quiz

As users are trying to figure out their needs, this imposed a problem as they don’t yet know what all things they need

Style Quiz

We reframed the questions to gauge their style preferences and needs.

Let’s walk through a scenario by Abby, our transgender friend

Thanks for reading!❤️
So glad you made it here and I hope you enjoyed the case study. I would love to hear your feedback or thoughts about it. Don't forget to check out my other projects

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