A mobile application for Wool and the Gang to improve the crafting experience for beginner knitters to explore, learn, fix, and knit clothing.
This 7-week academic case study for a senior experience design course with Jonathan Choi, Soraya Elchehimi, Joanna Lee, Dennis Limbo, and Karishma Sen is for our client, Wool and the Gang. My responsibilities for the project included outlining and conducting usability tests with five beginner knitters and designing the screens for the key user flows after defining the interface guidelines as a team.
#HarryStylesCardigan
The DIY fashion company strives to reinvent the crafting experience by offering knitwear patterns, supplies, and kits that allow customers to handcraft clothing. In 2020, the famous pop star, Harry Styles, wore a colourful knitted cardigan that began trending on TikTok. The high price tag of the cardigan led his Generation Z fans to pick up knitting and create homemade versions of it. From the trend, Wool and the Gang has seen an increase in traffic by 69 percent. For our case study, we wanted to retain this newly attracted customer base while leveraging the business’ existing brand personality. The team started with research into the company and pulled out its key brand value pillars.
Dissecting Brand Value Pillars
Provide Knitwork Knowledge The company aims to provide a learning platform with crafty knowledge for all skill levels. For example, they provide free patterns and a YouTube channel with tutorials that decipher the knitting code, hoping to make picking up the hobby as easy as possible.
Make It Fashionable Wool and the Gang looks to shift existing social conventions that knitting is the pastime of grandmas. They focus their offerings and marketing efforts on progressively moving into a modern fashion shop, collaborating with high fashion and deluxe-streetwear brands like Vivienne Westwoods and & Other Stories. Additionally, contemporary fashion press like Hypebae and Marie Claire have featured the brand.
Using Knitting Patterns
After dissecting the brand values, we conducted primary user research through interviews and surveys to understand knitters’ processes and practices. In our survey with 152 respondents, 84.9 percent of knitters indicated that they prefer to use patterns while starting and working on projects. A knitting pattern consists of detailed step-by-step text instructions to construct craftwork.
When asked about the experience of using patterns as guides for beginner knitters, many found it challenging to follow along and were confused by unexplained jargon and techniques. They had to seek additional help and troubleshoot externally. While looking for help online was relatively more straightforward for specific terms and techniques, beginner knitters struggled to identify and troubleshoot mistakes.
“I did not know what exactly to google when I ran into mistakes. I would try to describe and guess the problem and hopefully find something that matches what I'm seeing.”
— from an interview with a beginner knitter
Framing the Problem
While most knitters start their projects with written patterns, it is not a friendly learning resource as they have difficulty understanding the required skills and fixing their mistakes. The team saw an opportunity to elevate the experience for beginner knitters by providing more convenient access to the learning resources that help them learn to knit and troubleshoot as they work through a pattern.
Introducing Untangled
Untangled is a mobile application that provides knitters resources to overcome the cognitive overhead of knitting to empower them to continue their projects and gain confidence to tackle new ones. By helping them understand techniques and identify and correct their mistakes, our proposal aims to ease the challenges of learning the new hobby while elevating Wool and the Gang’s brand voices through its visual design.
Quick access to resources: Users will have quick access to tutorials relevant to complete each project. They can quickly learn and reference jargon, skills, and techniques required for each step of the pattern.
Visual search to troubleshoot: When knitters get stuck, they can identify the problem by taking a picture with the camera on their phone. The visual search feature will help remove the cognitive overhead of identifying errors, as knitters can troubleshoot efficiently and smoothly. Based on the picture, it will suggest tutorials to fix the error. Alternatively, they can type in keywords when they know the mistake.
Explore and find inspiration: From survey responses, 32 percent of participants noted that their primary motivation for knitting is for specific garments they see online on websites or on other people. Based on this finding, we added the visual search feature that enables knitters to locate Wool and the Gang projects similar to their inspiration. Additionally, the explore feed looks to re-engage knitters with new projects as they browse the company’s catalogue and collect inspiration.
Key Design Decisions and Rationale
1: Transitioning to mobile application from desktop attempt
The team first considered a desktop solution attached to Wool and the Gang’s existing site. More research insights indicated that 72 percent of knitters’ favourite place to knit is in front of the television while 25 percent knit whilst commuting. These findings helped us pivot away from a desktop solution and considered a mobile application that knitters can access on the go when they are not in front of a computer.
2: Creating a sub-brand
Choosing the House of Brands strategy, Untangled represents a direction that Wool and the Gang can move towards for its Brand expression in order to target and deliver value for a new, fashion-forward audience. Initially, purple was the accent colour, but we resorted to black and white, in the end, to create a blank canvas for showcasing the company’s expressive offerings. After removing colours, we used typography as the main driving force for communicating the brand.
3: Taking a look at feasibility for visual search
For the visual search feature, there are precedences like Nike’s shoe product search feature and H&M’s visual search for offerings. When considering the feasibility and viability, we researched options like the Google Vision API, a vision detection feature to integrate within applications. Alternatively, a fallback option for users to identify mistakes is to use images of common errors under search.
