Introduction
System design for a boutique store
Threads & Beads (T&B) is a clothing boutique specializing in customized clothing based in Coimbatore, India. During the Fall semester of 2022, my teammate and I created a platform to help T&B solve a main problem that they were facing. Our focus was more on the research and system analytics aspect of this project, although we also incorporated user experience principles in order to achieve the final result.
Team Work
The project was created in groups of five. My teammate are the ones listed below:
Yosi Montes de Oca
Nisha Anthraper
Rohit Asave
Prachee Javiya
Ashish Bhargav Gampa
My Role:
In this project, I was involved every step of the way, although my main were more focus in the research aspect as well as the consolidation on the solution to the problem.
Timeline:
The project was created during the fall semester of 2022 as part of a System Analitycs class at the UMBC, University of Maryland Baltimore County.
The problem
T&B manually calculates the garment’s measurement which cost a lot of inconsistencies
Threads & Beads (T&B), a Coimbatore-based women's clothing boutique, currently handles customer data manually, leading to inconsistencies in garment production. Designers rely on instinct for measurements, causing errors and impacting customer satisfaction. Implementing a system could eliminate inconsistencies, reduce errors, and improve overall satisfaction and revenue for T&B.
Design Process
How did the problem was approached?
Business Requirements
WHAT DOES T&B NEED?
Make a template that stores all the new customers' information.
Collect all the existing customer records using the same template.
Improve fit for the customer by helping T&B designers calculate more accurate measurements.
Analyze historical customer information to predict measurements and fit.
Explore new techniques to capture customers' measurements.
Business Value
THIS NEW SYSTEM WILL RESULT IN THE FOLLOWING BENEFITS:
Increase Operational Efficiency - 30% of current production efforts are spent on unnecessary rework due to inconsistent calculations.
Increase Operational Efficiency - 15% of the fabric is wasted due to oversized measurements
Increase customer satisfaction - Customer churn is at 15% every time there is a major rework due to miscalculations.
RESEARCH
Create a system that allows T&B designers to calculate garment dimensions more accurately.
A system at T&B reduces errors, improves fittings using customer data analysis, and enables handling more orders during peak seasons, increasing overall revenue.
Use case diagram
Chain of use cases with boundaries
The diagram shown in the figure below illustrates the chain of use cases with boundaries present in this project. The use cases work as a chain since each use case goes one after the other. Additionally, in most use cases, the postcondition for one is the precondition for the next.
Individual use cases
How will the users visualize the process?
Here are five use cases that describe the main tasks users must accomplish using the Threads & Beads (T&B) system. These use cases aim to understand how users view the process to ensure that the new system explicitly incorporates their insights within the design.
1. Customers must accomplish this step in order to purchase a T&B outfit.
2. The designer sketches the outfit, and the Founder finalizes it.
3. The seamster sews the garment to completion, which is quality checked by the designer.
4. The designer first checks the outfit's readiness. The designer approves the outfit and schedules a meeting with the customer for the outfit trial.
5. The outfit must be delivered after the customer and the founder approval the final garment.
Interviews
Four research methods were used
The team and I have conducted three interviews to understand all business perspectives and elicit the information we need in order to develop the project. The interviews were done with the founder, the designer, and the customer via Zoom. Below is gathering all the detail for each interview.
Person Interviewed: Sheena Thomas, founder of T&B.
Date: Oct 13, 2022
QUESTIONS ASKED:
What happens when a new customer comes to T&B to place an order?
How different is the new customer process from an existing customer?
Do you oversee the production process directly?
Do you handle the paper-based database on a daily basis?
What happens when a customer is unsatisfied with the final outfit?
Person Interviewed: Geetha, Designer of casual clothing.
Date: Oct 13, 2022
QUESTIONS ASKED:
What is the design process currently followed at T&B?
How are the design ideas and sketches communicated to the production team?
Who is involved in the production process? What is the required information?
How is the final measurement calculation done?
Describe the Fitting process.
Person Interviewed: Megha Alex, a customer of T&B.
Date: Oct 13, 2022
QUESTIONS ASKED:
How long have you been going to T&B?
What is the best feature of T&B?
What do you think T&B can do to improve?
What does customer satisfaction mean to you?
How would you rate T&B in terms of customer satisfaction on a scale of 1-10? (10 being exemplary service and product).
DEFINE
Insights
Communication is the key to the store to success
The team and I have conducted three interviews to understand all business perspectives and elicit the information we need in order to develop the project. The interviews were done with the founder, the designer, and the customer via Zoom. Below is gathering all the detail for each interview.
ACHIEVEMENTS FROM THE INTERVIEWS:
Understood overall business processes.
Comprehended the designing and production process.
Determined information required for the future system.
Recognized customers’ satisfaction factor.
MAIN LEARNING:
The miscalculation of garments measurements is a major problem.
T&B does not have an efficient system for communication of design and pattern to the production team.
For customers, being in contact with the founder when visiting T&B is important.
The solution
The proposed system aims to remove inconsistencies caused by human errors
The proposed solution is a new customized system with a centralized database created specifically for T&B. The system will be capable of handling information regarding new and old customer orders, automatic measurement calculations, garment design visual details, and invoice preparation. The system will be used by the employees of T&B, which means customers will not have access to it.
DFD diagram
Context level DFD diagram
This diagram shows the Context level DFD of the Threads & Beads proposed system. The input such as new orders, garment design, and garment assembly into the T&B system, comes from the external entities namely Customer, Designer, and Seamster respectively.
The output from the T&B system goes to the mentioned external entities.
IDEATE
System Design Explanation
Designing with interaction design principles and usability goals in mind
In T&B app's UI design, we prioritize visibility (simplicity with full functionality) and consistency (similar interface elements), ensuring users easily understand and use the application without spending time on learning.
Design Process
Dashboard screen design
The dashboard is the first screen the user (founder or designer) views upon logging into the system. The menu panel on the left lets users navigate the system with ease and log out of the system after use for security. The customer information and reason for the visit are mentioned to allocate internal resources efficiently.
WHAT CAN YOU SEE ON THE DASHBOARD?:
Overall view of the critical stats such as Income, Expenses, Orders, etc.
Keep track of orders and daily activities.
the central panel shows today’s date and houses the CTAs to add a new customer or order.
Design Process
Measurement Log screen
The measurement log screen is the input screen where the user adds the customer’s body measurements - which are manually taken by the designer. This page is navigated through the customer profile menu item present in the list of menus on the left side.
WHAT ELSE CAN YOU SEE ON THIS SCREEN?:
A customer’s profile can also be searched specifically from the search bar. The design sketch is uploaded on the right side for the seamster’s reference. The body measurements from here are fed into the algorithm that runs in the backend, and the final measurements are displayed on the next page.
Design Process
Measurement Calculation screen
The measurement calculation screen is the output of the previous screen, i.e., the Measurement Log. Here, the calculated measurements are displayed on the screen; the calculation happens in the backend. The designer or founder can take a printout of the calculated measurements, design references, and notes, which will be handed over to the semester.
WHAT ELSE CAN YOU SEE ON THIS SCREEN?:
The screen also allows the user to save the details and take action sometime later. The users can also go back to edit the measurements if needed via the “Measurement Log” button.
PROTOTYPE
Check out the middle fidelity prototype
To demonstrate how the interaction would work for the client, a middle-fidelity prototype was created. The prototype aimed to showcase to the owner and the design of T&B how the system would work to get the proper feedback necessary to improve the design. As a result, the prototype shows how the system can automatically calculate the information needed to create the garment based on the client's body measurements, which must be introduced to the designed platform.
CONCLUSION
What can I provide for the next project?
Although this project was more focused on areas related to research and system analytics, the user experience component was also quite important in order to achieve the solution we came up with. As a result, I would like to share with you a few lessons I have learned:
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Even though this project didn’t look to me at the beginning to be related to UX, the reality was that it did!. User experiences are not only for making prototypes and creating a beautiful screen, in fact, but this also is not the main purpose. User experience aims to provide users with a great experience when they are using a product, no matter if it is an application, website, or system. In this case, we were more focused on understanding what was the problem and how to provide the best solution taking into consideration the customer's requirements.
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I always enjoy working on teams because the different ways to see the same things can be translated into multiple opportunities or ideas to solve the problem. However, working on a team also means that you need to consider your teammates' time and opinions, something that I believe I do really well since I like to hear alternative proposals.
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This was my first project working with a real client, and I was intimidated. Although I have experience working with clients as an Architect, I was quite nervous this time since I didn’t have experience with real clients in this new field. However, I really enjoy the process, and speaking with the client, designer and some customer helps us a lot to gather all the information we need in order to develop the best outcome we could.
Full project
Check out the full project here
This project consisted of 5 deliverables, which can be found in the button below:
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