Closet Circle

App Design

Closet Circle is the term-long group project I worked on while taking CPSC 444 (Advanced Methods for Human Computer Interaction) at the University of British Columbia.

Our team of 4 designed a mobile application that supports clothing lending and borrowing within small social circles (limited to friends and family), conducted an experiment to test two versions of the app, and also made a final project video.

Designer, Researcher,
Video editor

Figma, Canva

problem space

The negative impacts of mass-producing clothes at low costs are often overlooked.

In Canada specifically, it’s estimated that 12 million tons of textile waste are dumped into North American landfills each year –and that’s only from one country.

- CBC

Existing work in sustainability research has demonstrated the potential of clothing sharing economies as a viable method of promoting sustainable clothing habits.

The organization of peer-to-peer exchanges is an attractive, environmentally sustainable model since it allows people to explore new fashion trends while reducing clothing consumption.

But as an emerging model in textile waste reduction, there are limited platforms that offer adequate support in clothing renting and borrowing.

research

To inform our design, we first conducted a field study with 4 participants to deepen our understanding of current borrowing practices and the challenges that people face.

Key findings

Who people exchange with the most: People are most comfortable borrowing and lending with their family and close friends.
Where it happens: People tend to exchange clothing in person.
What people value: People highly value the casualness that comes from exchanging with small social circles, and these exchanges happen with little concern

These key findings validated our approach to start designing for a clothing borrowing/lending app that takes advantage of the pre-existing trust that exists in close social circles. With key finding 2, we decided that we also wanted to explore supporting in-person meetups as well.

prototypes

From our field study, we created a low fidelity prototype and then formulated our experiment goals for A/B testing. We focused on comparing two aspects between versions of the app:

Experiment goals

Which version better supports:
1) the perceived casualness that users felt, and
2) the awareness that users had of status updates for clothing transactions?

We then created two medium fidelity versions of the app, where we implemented the workflow of borrowing an item from a friend's closet.

Shared designs between the 2 versions

Where it differs

After a borrow request is sent, the designs begin to differ. The Chat version (version A) supports borrowing clothing and organizing a meetup with a chat-based interface, while the Activities version (version B) forgoes using a chat feature entirely. The activities version uses an entirely separate component for handling transactions/status updates.

Borrow request pending

Chat version

Activities version

Setting up a meeting to handoff the piece of clothing

Chat version

Activities version

Requesting to extend the borrowing time of a clothing piece

Chat version

Activities version

usability testing

Along with 2 pilots, we conducted usability testing with 10 participants over Zoom. Overall, our participants felt that the perceived casualness and awareness of clothing transaction updates were quite good in both versions of the app.

Chat version findings

Having more interaction with friends/family and being able to attach messages to borrow requests made the experience feel more personal
Chat provides a place to communicate specific details, like saying "Hey I'm running late" or "letting someone know what specific event you're going to wear an item to
It's harder to keep track of current clothing transactions and get a complete overview as activities can be lost within the chat
Chatting may feel inconvenient because it requires waiting for a person's response

Activities version findings:

Scheduling support lends to an easy and straightforward experience, as users can do it asynchronously while spending less time
Because users can see statuses at a glance, it's a lot clearer to get a detailed overview of current transactions and what needs to be managed
Having both the home page and the activities page feels somewhat redundant

There was no clear consensus to which prototype version is preferred between users.

This is likely because some users valued the casualness and informality of the chat version, while other users valued the clarity and efficiency of the activities version (it's not super essential to have a chat function as people can talk on other platforms).

reflections

We didn't get to iterate on our mid-fi prototypes. But here are some recommendations that we would make if we ever continued working on this app!

Combine the strengths of each prototype

Keep the chat functionality, while adding a scheduling tool widget in order to support structured and guided meet-ups.

Reduce redundancy

Combine the activities page with the home page so that users can still have a centralized, comprehensive summary of all ongoing activities.