Ideation Phase:

Pain point:

According to my observation and persional experience, certain group of people (include me) really sensitive to how others view us. At this cirsumstance, confidence improvement becomes really important to us. In different occasions, especially some important ones (like dating, business meetings,etc), if I dress wrong or different with others, I will feel so uncomfortable and could never fit in to people anymore. So I want to make a project to help people who are as low confident as me to dress correctly in order to improve confidence and social performance.

Research question:

How can I help users choose proper outfit in order to reduce their social anxiety?

Target audience:

People who are not confident of taking outfit and don’t want to make mistake to lower their confidence.

Goal:

Help user dress properly thus boost their social performance and confidence.

Project overview:

“properfect” An app helps you choose wardrobe based on occasions.

features include:

• you can customize your gender, height and weight and some other basic information to get more personalized recommendations
• go through your photo library to detect your sensitivity to temperature, making adjustment accordingly. Then you will not feel too hot/cold by wearing recommended outfits.
• in Calendar page, a avator wearing the outfit you chose will be recorded at that day. You can write down some experience that outfit brings to you and you can always go back and check.

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Goals and approach:

After having lots of ideas and thoughts going on, I realize I need to make sense of the mess. In order to rethink about what my goals are and what I want to accomplish, I used “3W” method by Abby Covert. By answering all these questions, I get a clearer mind.

Start with why

-Why does this work need to be done?

I want I could use this work to help people with social anxiety feel safe in new environment. An inproper outfit may cause a deep hurt in their self confidence, I don’t want to see that.

-Why is change needed? Why do those changes matter? Why should other people care?

Nothing similar in the market yet, it’s a gap between social anxieties and daily life which have to be filled with in order to make people feel self-satisfied and confident. It would be a wonderful thing if everyone in the world being confident, isn’t it?

-Why hasn’t this been tackled correctly?

I guess there is no good amount of attention in this area. The problem is hard to be noticed, the reason I have realized this problem is because I am someone with social anxious myself.

What before how

“We all know not to construct a building without a plan.”

-What are you trying to change? What is within your abilities?

I am tring to change the way social anxieties perform themselves when they don’t have enough confidence. I can help them choose right outfit and performance tips in order to perform better.

-What do you know about the quality of what exists today? What further research will help you understand it?

It only focus on a certain group of people, people who having social anxiety, but I am thinking that do poeple without social anxiety will feel the stress of social performance at certain times (even though not as strong as social anxieties). I plan doing online chatting interviews through reddit in different channels —- “social anxiety” sub and “outfithelp” sub, to find out does only people with social anxietyies have this need or not. Also, to find out what can help them futher.

-What has been done before? What can you learn from those experiences? Has anyone succeeded or failed at this in the past?

I didn’t find any specific same project on the internet, but there are outfit recommendation based on weather/personal styles, etc, also there are projects which aim to help social anxieties.

How and options

“How is an ever-growing list of directions we could take while staying true to our reasons why.”

-How much time and effort will it take?

I will use the rest of my semester to finish it.

-How could the solution look and feel?

I am thinking about an app/web project. It should provide users recommendation options,reasons and tips for their dressing. I want this experiece be warm-hearted and friendly, without judge and anything make sensitive (people with social anxiety usually sensitive) users feel unsafe or uncomfortable.

-How will this be measured?

Based on users’ feedback.

-How will we know if we’ve succeeded?

Everyone had a good experience and provide a positive feedback? I will keep thinking this as I think it’s not enough.

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Research Phase:

personal outfit journal (experience with different outfit everyday):

1

This outfit is one of my favourite. I choose this especially for our Tokyo Universal world trip.

It was during summer vocation with a big sun, so I want to look energetic and cool.In orfer to show vitality, I chose a bright yellow as the main color of this outfit. For physical sunscreening, I was wearing a hat with a huge brim. The color of my hat is kind of matchy with my skirt.

I thought I have made a great choice and I had a wonderful experience at that day.

2

This outfit was shot by my classmate. It was a game design class, I was get up late and just randomly picked something to wear.In the left side was another classmate of mine. The photo taker said to us “both of you not looking like come here to have class. You looks like gender avatar options provided in the beginning of a game!”.

It was an unique experience undeniably, but I was feeling like I was wearing wrong outfit for that occasion (at this time, college class). After this issue, I cannot stop myself doubting about my choice and cannot focus on the class.