Weft
Student Project
Fashion Tourism Exploration Platform
Overview
In a 10-week project, a team of 4 conducted research and designed the Weft, a platform addressing the lack of authenticity in mainstream fashion tourism by connecting travelers with locally curated fashion experiences.
In this project, I am responsible for mapping user journeys, creating service blueprints, designing and facilitating an ideation workshop, and prototyping mobile interfaces in Figma and testing them with Maze.
The result was a strategically grounded concept with a clear North Star metric and the potential to achieve a 7+ NPS, positioning Weft as a scalable, community-driven fashion tourism platform solution.
Meet the Team
Archithaa Karuppannagounder; Yunyu Liu; Leonard Reese; Yanqi Shi
My Role
User Researcher; Service Designer; UX Designer
Tool
Figma, Miro, Maze, Adobe After Effect
Duration
10 Weeks, 2024 Summer
Key Takeaways
Through designing and facilitating the ideation workshop, I:
Value Clustering: I guided the group to group related ideas by theme (e.g., authenticity, convenience, community). This helped us see patterns and consolidate similar directions.
Impact–Effort Matrix: Once clustered, I led the team in evaluating each concept against user value (impact) and feasibility (effort). This exercise quickly surfaced “quick wins” and high-impact opportunities.
Prioritization Outcome: Instead of chasing too many ideas, the team agreed on three focus areas that balanced user desirability with business viability. These became the foundation for our prototypes and iterations.
At a Glance
Define
Design Northstars
The goal of Weft was to create a fashion-tourism platform that connects professionals, influencers, and cultural explorers with authentic local fashion experiences.
By enabling exclusive events, cultural immersion, and hands-on workshops, the platform aimed to establish strong early traction—building the foundation for high-quality connections, generating consistent user reviews and social engagement, and achieving a Net Promoter Score of 7+ in its pilot phase
Ideate
Ideation & Value Clustering
I designed and facilitated an ideation workshop for the team to transform research insights into opportunities, generating a wide range of “How Might We” ideas.
Using value clustering, we organized these ideas into themes and mapped them against three pillars—Authenticity, Convenience, and Community Engagement—to identify the most promising directions for concept development.
Ideation & Value Clustering
By mapping what fashion businesses, enthusiasts, and cultural explorers want and struggle with through value proposition canvas, we identified where our platform’s features,including event management, community building, and curated content—could create real value and drive growth.
Prototype & Testings
Miniman effort to test
We knew that we could not test all of our ideas with the time and resources we had, so we agreed on criteria to prioritize the list based on Nielsen Norman Group’s framework and customized to suit our circumstances. We ranked each item based in three areas: our ability to test it; the riskiness of the idea itself; and the potential impact we saw. The exercise provided us with five areas to focus on for the test.
Since the team operated across multiple time zones, I created a prototype backlog planner to streamline communication and ensure smooth tracking of prototype development.
Strategyzer’s test card
Before deciding on how we would go about our testing, we first devised hypotheses for each focus area. Using Strategyzer’s Test Card format allowed us to define simple metrics for validating our concepts using Likert scales in three categories: opinion on initial impressions; trustworthiness of event booking; and level of motivation.
Before deciding on how we would go about our testing, we first devised hypotheses for each focus area. Using Strategyzer’s Test Card format allowed us to define simple metrics for validating our concepts using Likert scales in three categories: opinion on initial impressions; trustworthiness of event booking; and level of motivation.
Testing flow #1
Initially, some testers struggled to quickly understand the controls, resulting in lower task completion rates.
The overall rating reached 6.4, indicating a high level of satisfaction.
The user-generated photo areas are popular on the heatmap.
Testing flow #2
The task completion rate reached 92%.
While most testers expressed confidence in it, a small number were less trusting.
From the heatmap, there are some "confused areas" in the map view.
The heatmap is quite clear on the booking page.
Testing flow #3
The task completion rate reached 95.7%.
Most testers think it motivates them.
The heatmap is qprettyclear in the completing workshop process.
Learning & Iteration
Learning cards
After the first round testing, we documented our observations, learnings, and the next steps for each focus area, using the Strategyzer’s Test Card. Based on that, we further defined our next step: design onboarding screens, design higher fidelity to indicate the interactivity more clearly, highlight out the business verification, and think about two questions: How might we make the badges and certifications more motivating? What other benefits can points unlock in the app?
Concept testing
For the concept to work, we identified that motivation and trust were the key factors to test for.
Reframed prototype
Directly motivated by the user feedback on the first prototype, we set out to revise the designs and content. At this point, we felt confident enough to progress to a higher-fidelity UI design, weaving in a visual theme to convey the spirit of the brand while also making the intended user flows clearer to follow.
