From Happy to Hippy.
A 60s and 70s inspired vintage knitting app, ‘the Hippy Llama’.
This project was set over two weeks as a visual design sprint. The initial concept was to choose one of three option — knitting, gardening and a drinks ios application.
The brief was aimed at creating a visual design project focusing on the elements that incorporate UI design. The aim was to design a finished prototype of a knitting app that included onboarding, a product page, checkout and a number of other interactive elements.
Initially called ‘the Happy Llama’ the free reign that was given to this project really encouraged being as creative as possible. From the offset this was a passion project for me as I have been a big fan of crochet and knitwear for a long time and so I felt I could fully immerse myself when establishing the aesthetic and feeling surrounding the brand.
Competitive analysis
To get a feel of the industry and the demand for knitting at the moment I looked at a number of online stores including:
- Wool and the gang
- Love crafts Knitting
- Blake LDN
- Cashfana
- Vasquiat
With over 400,000 followers on Instagram, ‘Wool and the Gang’ presented a unique opportunity opportunity where buying the wool to knit selected clothing had become extremely popular. Especially during lockdown the need to keep busy and find ‘at home’ activities to keep themselves occupied was an area I wanted to pursue further.
Mood board
Getting straight into it, I knew from doing a whole host of competitive analysis that vintage knitwear was being worn and hugely popular amongst the younger demographic of 18–35 year olds. Having done some user interviews with my 20 year old sister and some of her friends the nature of 70s inspired vintage fashion and that unique groovy and funky aesthetic was a factor when looking into the various mood boards done on Miro and Pinterest (select link for further mood boards).
Having researched the likes of 60s fashion icon Twiggy Lawson and looked at a number of smaller independent brands on instagram it was clear there was demand and interest for an interactive subscription based knitting app.
Through my comparative and feature analysis I found that curating personal designs for knitwear was high in demand. As a result, with Pinterest really helping to curate my moodboard and the aesthetic of the app it was interesting that its onboarding process surrounding ‘personalisation’ would also be incorporated into my design. Let’s have a look below:
Similar to Pinterest, the app would have a curation page where customers can choose or pin their favourite designers as well as knitwear that they’re most attracted to. By selecting the season, skill level and favourite looks the app would allow the user to ‘go back in time’ whilst creating their news feed. This, along with interactive ‘laid back llamas’ spurring you on as you navigated through the app looked like this:
It was really important throughout to get the amalgamation of typography, iconography and colour contrast to a place that was reminiscent of the time in order to create that feeling of continuity when users navigate the app. As a result, as well as using a moodboard I went back to typography of the time with the recent ‘Once upon a time in Hollywood’ movie becoming a significant contributing factor to both the colour scheme, contrast and typography with this site being the major influence for the two main colour ways throughout the project:
If you remember Cliff Booth from the film then you can imagine I was happy to have him in mind when using the inspiration behind this quote to bring the typography, iconography and colour ways to life.
Product Page
When finished with the onboarding process the main insights from the feature analysis were to incorporate the designs with as much visual emphasis as possible. As a result, the personalisation page when finished would give your results like this:
Speaking to a number of users the demographic was mainly targeted towards 18–35 year olds and although I did not create a persona for this project the feedback lead me to develop a mental picture of how important visual representation of products would be, especially with the younger demographic being so connected to the imagery of instagram, pinterest, tiktok etc.
Additionally, having a subscription model of three ‘knitting packs’ that you can see on the above right selection highlighted the need for an easy and practical model that was in keeping with the skill level of the user if she wanted to knit her garments or not.The tracker on the top allows the user to see how much longer they have left in this short product process and equally has a ‘skip for now’ button allowing the user to move on if undecided.
FINAL FEATURES
Some final features regarding the product page if you can hold on.
When purchasing the product the user would be able to know what is in their pack, along with a stress on sustainability and quality of yarn. Best shown in the below frame:
I have tagged the prototype at the bottom so as to see a full run through. And finally, welcome to the herd…
DEVELOPING THE IDEA FURTHER
The emphasis of working with smaller independent brands and using the platform as a marketplace for knitwear in the future was also a consistent narrative throughout my competitor research with many small brands offering personalised and bespoke knitwear to individual clients. For example:
The app would be a great place for designers to showcase their work on a more interactive, curated and manageable platform which is somewhere I would love to look further into. The idea of a leaderboard of designers, personalised knitting and tutorials are all elements that would do well in creating a real culture for knitting lovers all in one place on your phone.
FINAL PROTOTYPE
