Greg Ball
Mr Porter
Brief, Concept and Deliverables
OUGD603
Brief
Concept
Deliverables
Create a platform where the user can interact with style they see in magazines or on the street and get an exact or very near example from the Mr Porter shop, it must also function as a place to read and discover by bringing together the journalistic and digital outputs of Mr Porter.
An app that allows users to get a clothing match or recommendation from the Mr Porter stock from another users style photograph. Integrating instagram and gathering any photographs tagged with #Mr Porter. This would also incorporate the rest of the Mr Porter journalistic output.
- iPhone App
Greg Ball
Research
Research & Context
For the research into this brief i looked further into a brand that i already knew fairly well in terms of their audience and products they sold. But for the research for the brief i wanted to examine their brand more so i looked into things like the way they integrate thier multi-channel retailing across the online store and there social media.
OUGD603
Mr Porter are a luxury retailer and from my research it is obvious that quality and customer experience is key so this means that the design of the app has to live up to this as well. They also already have a vast amount of journalistic and editorial output but it is all scattered all over the place, so it would be good to bring this into the app as well.
Greg Ball
Development
Development
The development of this brief was primarily about developing the concept of having this garment scanning feature in the app and then letting the design go from there. The main bit of the development was the design of the UI icons and interface, i wanted to keep these on brand with what Mr Porter already has so that the app could seamlessly sit with their brand and offerings.
OUGD603
The other main stage of development was the layout and navigation of the app, this needed to be done well because of the small nature of the screen it was displayed on. And i also wanted to integrate large images to accompany the stories because all too often on small devices the appearance of images get compromised in favour of the text in articles, so i wanted to achieve a good balance here.
Greg Ball
iPhone App Home-screen
Outcomes
As you can see from the image above the appearance of the app would sit well with existing Mr Porter offerings and i think the clean layout really suits the content of the app, and would also appear to the Mr Porter target audience.
OUGD603
The use of full screen images on the front-page of the app is something i think makes the app design work really well, they give a refreshing, uncluttered feel to the app. The navigation is hidden off-canvas by the use of the familiar hamburger icon and then slides in from the side to join the menu bar giving the user the options they need.
Greg Ball
Articles
Outcomes
The first image here is a continuation of the homepage and demonstrates how different media would be integrated into the app, in this case a video from the Mr Porter YouTube channel. The use of the header and full bleed image and a subtle play button, is all that is needed to seamlessly integrate this into the app, the user would simply click the play icon and the video would stream from the YouTube channel, this would also keep the app size down because of embedding, you wouldn’t have to include all the videos in the app file.
OUGD603
The second image here shows the appearance of a text based article. Using the images for the article at the top of the page, these then swipe through by user touch, and you can see that there is more content by the use of a small part of the next image appearing. The text is then displayed below the article title and the number of text sections indicated with the familiar grey circle indicators. The text is set out in two columns bringing in influence from the brands already existing Mr Porter Post.
Greg Ball
Mr Porter Picks
Outcomes
This is the main feature and exciting part of the app, this allows users to record an image, video or just an average person on the street and then the app will scan the Mr Porter catalogue and match with the same or similar items. And then it will allow the user to see these and then further purchase them from the Mr Porter site.
OUGD603
I think this would be a really good feature and i also think the target audience would like it as would Mr Porter who are already heavily engaged with their audience on social media. Future editions of the app could allow users to scan more thinks such as patterns and then have the app match that with similar patterns on clothing, and also integrate a social media sharing aspect.