True Spirit

The Problem: The client, TrueSpirit, is a new internet retailer for schools and parents who want a modern school uniform for K­-12 children. The site offers updated uniform fashion, including pants for girls and zip­-up hoodies, provides a “must-­haves” checklist from the school’s administrator for each school year, and recommends accessories allowed by the school’s dress code. The client wants a new eCommerce site that meets the stylistic needs of their young target demo, suggests additional purchases, and also adheres to the needs of parents and administrators. 

Timeline: 2 Weeks

Tools: Sketchbook, Axure, Photoshop

Process: User Flows & Task Analysis, Comparative Analysis, Card Sorting, Site Map, Wireframes, Interactive Prototype

Addressing the challenge: Reviewing the personas, both parent and administrator, I found the common thread to be a concern for purchasing the right clothing so the child abides by the school’s policy. I also considered the administrator’s responsibilities by building a tool that populates the mandatory list so a parent can shop in confidence. While the brief stated a desire to let students “express themselves, within reason,” the personas were more concerned with compliance and returns. This led me to focus the design around meeting the parents’ needs, for reasons twofold. First, for the majority of school age children, the parents control the budget and, since the store will support K-12, there will be a significantly higher replacement rate in those early years. To serve this goal, emphasizing the trustworthiness of the site was paramount. Satisfied parents and administrators will make for repeat business. Second, given the myriad clothing choices available to adolescents, I believe that no matter how appealing you make it, the inherent nature of a required uniform will be a difficult challenge to overcome for a child’s passion. Tell an adolescent they need to do anything, and they will rarely love it. Finally, my research led to studies that spoke of how school uniforms effectively blurred some of the differences that can cause social discomfort in children of diverse backgrounds.

Competitive Analysis: During my heuristic review, I researched the school uniform vendors of True Grits, Academy Uniforms, and Flynn O’Hara. I found all three school uniform sites to be lacking in tools to help parents find the exact articles of clothing they needed and they all lacked the modern presentation of a typical eCommerce site. They also did not provide tools for administrators, which also made it challenging to find a cohesive list of approved goods. Conversely, I found that many of the larger clothing retailers offered more styles and a slicker presentation, but the items were simply the formal items from their children’s collection, and they totally lacked tools for parents to shop with confidence that user research showed as most valuable.

Personas: I was supplied with three personas. Two parents with slightly different shopping intentions, who became models for my two tasks, and a school administrator. All three placed the highest importance on accurate, trustworthy information, and the parents were concerned about easy returns.

Storyboard and User Flow: The storyboard highlights the intersection, overlap, and divergence of these concerns, but ultimately they all pointed in a similar direction. A user flowchart helped outline the areas where administrator tasks overlapped with parents’ needs. Working on a storyboard helped me creatively find places where the persona’s goals overlapped, and guided the creation of tools to serve those tasks in a satisfying manner.

Site Map: Sketching a sitemap also helped me visualize the critical interplay between administrator and parents, as well as the paths different users might take to a particular article of clothing.

Sketching and Wireframes: After sketching several potential layouts, and having them peer reviewed, I built an interactive prototype in Axure, which is always my favorite part of a project, when the ideas start to solidify into something valuable. I wanted to create a site that supported the two critical paths discovered during the creation of sitemaps and storyboards:

• Users who were merely browsing for new articles of clothing, and would be amenable to suggestion of other popular pieces. This would help them feel like their child would fit in, and contribute to potential upsell. There would also be a tool for querying an administrator’s list to see if an item is excluded.
• Parents who were members and shopping through a Parent’s Portal. They would have students in a school system and would be primarily concerned that they were buying the right thing. They would be able to purchase items directly from an administrator-created list, which would also note/cross-reference items that a child might have placed on a wishlist.

User Testing: User tests on the the prototype found areas that needed improvements, and the importance of creating various breadcrumbs to move potential shoppers towards completing a purchase. Reviewing the drafts against the personas, I realized I needed to make sure that the return options were clear and large, though I hoped the experience would help parents shop with confidence and this accuracy would lead to a lower rate of return.

Further consideration: While outside the scope of the initial brief, I also built out an administrator’s portal, whose functionality I felt would be critical to providing parents with an accurate list of acceptable clothing. Based on my review of competitor sites, I felt that this peace of mind for the parents would be the biggest differentiator in making True Spirit the go to vendor for school uniforms.