Snapshop

We could say that people tend to copy what other people wear these days, it's valid that we're all influenced by our surroundings. To achieve that, people mostly use search engines to find that awesome shirt or beautiful hat that they had seen celebrities wearing. There are a lot of websites and blogs especially focused on that, where the whole outfit of any celebrity is manually analyzed to provide links to online stores, so their readers can buy those clothes for themselves. When someone sees interesting clothing that another person is using on the streets or the web, should be possible to identify that same item or another similar one instantly.

I imagined an application concept where you could easily search for clothes and accessories by using an image. Imagine an app that receives an image, identifies the garment, shows you all the available options that are either equal or similar to the garment, and provides you a centralized way to buy it from a bunch of different online stores.

I interviewed two friends and asked a simple question to them, with which I would get contrasting feedback against my initial idea.

Question"Imagine a mobile app that enables you to identify and purchase a garment that you see in real life, how do you imagine this working in your phone?"

User 1: Sara Oliveira, 28yrs old, Portuguese - “When I imagine this, the idea that comes to my mind is open the app that access my phone, taking a photo and in a few seconds I have what I’m looking for and where is the closest store. If I wouldn’t have a store in 10km around, the app should give me the possibility of purchasing it online directly on app, in a simple way: one screen with: choosing size, add delivery address and payment.”

User 2: Riia Hyppönen, 27yrs old, Finnish - “Well I imagine it would base on online stores so excluding handmade (etc) items of course.. by taking a picture the app would identify the product and/or maybe other similar ones and give you a list where you can find it and for what price and maybe direct you to the online store :) or you could insert the keywords manually and it tries to search the available options for you, or by scanning the code that is now in every clothes (where are the material details and stuff), but then it must be your friend or family to ask to scan the code :D I don’t know.. all that comes to my mind.”

I’ve made these interviews after sketching some ideas, and I was surprised that both answers significantly converged to my initial idea. That gave me the confidence to continue with this concept in mind.

In order to get a overview I created this user flow chart.

This flow of the app is focused on the main interaction, the most differentiator one, the interaction from when the user takes a photo and identifies something.

I’ve imagined two solutions for the identified interaction.

In the first one 3.1 — Highlight (A) the user is invited to highlight in the photo the item that he wants to find, drawing with a finger above the photo revealing where is the item.

The second one 3.1 — Highlight (B) is maybe the easiest solution for the user, but really heavier in tech terms, I imagined a service that provides to the application a full analysis to garments and accessories available in an image, giving to the user an option to choose which one he wants to search.