Herringbone & Sui
UX & UI Design
BRIEF
BRIEF
In India, there’s no midpoint when it comes to formal attire for men. On the one hand, 'luxury labels' retail suits at prohibitive prices; on the other, if you get a suit tailored by your local darji, you’re never sure what it will end up looking like. This problem led two friends, Kabir and Samarth, to set up Herringbone & Sui in December 2014.
For a year and a half, H&S stylists had been travelling all over Mumbai with a blue duffel bag full of fabric samples and styles. While Kabir & Samarth had learnt a lot from the experience, they knew the process was too unwieldy and the way in which their stylists interacted with customers had to change.
In India, there’s no midpoint when it comes to formal attire for men. On the one hand, luxury labels retail suits at prohibitive prices; on the other, if you get a suit tailored by your local darji, you’re never sure what it will end up looking like. This problem led two friends, Kabir and Samarth, to set up Herringbone & Sui in December 2014.
For a year and a half, H&S stylists had been travelling all over Mumbai with a blue duffel bag full of fabric samples and styles. While Kabir & Samarth had learnt a lot from the experience, they knew the process was too unwieldy and the way in which their stylists interacted with customers had to change.
Objective
How do you empower staff to provide an excellent customer experience?
How do you empower staff to provide an excellent customer experience?
People often ask us what we do. It’s sometimes easier to say, “we design digital products” – and while that’s not wrong, what we really do is design for a desired experience. So the first questions we asked ourselves was:
1.
How do we want H&S customers to feel?
2.
How will we facilitate this conversation between the customer and the stylist?
CORNERSTONE OF THE H&S EXPERIENCE
In the early days of H&S, stylists met with a lot of customers in their homes and had to lug around voluminous brochures and huge bags of samples. We decided to streamline that process to something that was a blend of the physical and the digital. We created the H&S app for a stylist equipped with a 13" iPad Pro. This would improve the interaction and provide a platform around which the stylist could engage the customer.
ACCESSIBLE NAVIGATION
Customers visiting the store could start the conversation from any step in the process – from fabrics to measurements. We wanted to enable the stylist to be able to take off from any point the customer chose. This meant giving the different steps in the process their own entry points. With the customers leaning in and viewing the iPad as much as the stylist, the options had to be easy to see and navigate.
SHOP FOR A SPECIFIC ITEM
We used a minimal approach when designing the app that allowed the quality of the products to shine through.
PICK A FABRIC
Large screens and sharp images allow the customer to see the detail in the fabric before they see it in person.
GET MEASURED
The UI controllers were designed to require minimum effort from the stylist.
SHORTLIST
The app gives the stylist the ability to shortlist specific items for the customer that they could return to at a later time.
ADJUSTMENTS AND CART
The stylist can make “adjustments” to the cart before confirming the total order value.
