WAYWT: What are you wearing today?
Part of my new year’s resolution is to cut down on my ridiculous amount clothes and learn Android development. I’m tackling both by developing a closet organizing Android app and documenting my progress.
The first step in any design process is to plan and research. Who is the user? What problem does this solve? Are there other similar apps? Every design project starts with an idea for a problem, often by standing in the shower long enough. Asking these questions help me create actionable goals and feature sets.
Who will use this?
Obviously me. But who is me? The user is someone who:
- Owns a lot of clothes
- Wants to keep track of clothing inventory
- to cut down on items
- to mark which ones to sell/donate
- Doesn’t want to use a spreadsheet or online service
- Has an Android phone
- Loses track of clothes in room or different places
- Wants to plan outfits in bed
- Needs to check the weather to plan the outfit
Just by considering the user, I can get a sense of the features. The biggest question though, is “Should this be a mobile app or a mobile-friendly website?”. I’ve decided to go with an app because I want the user to have a local backup of their information. Using a website would mean having to setup web hosting and a login system. I also want to round out my skill set since I’ve made a web app before but not an Android app.
Features
Some of these are basic features, while others might take substantial work. I will do a project estimation at a later section.
- Android app, probably with Kotlin since I know some Java
- Plan outfit from your closet
- Suggest a random new outfit, or from a previous one that matches the weather
- Save the outfit
- Display the weather
- Add items to closet
- Search for items
- Sort by Recent, Price, Name
- Filter by Color, Length, Brand, Season, Dry-Clean, other tags
- Add items to wishlist (maybe add price tracker and notify?)
- Take a photo for an item or outfit, or add one from the web
- Keep a user profile with measurements, could be brand specific (like Nike Shoe: 9.5 and Adidas Shoe: 9)
- Local data, backup/restore using Google Drive Android API
- Save photos to Google Drive (images might take up lots of space)
Similar Apps
Researching similar apps allows me to do some market research. I can read reviews on the app store to see what users are satisfied with, what features people want, pain points, and so on. I get a general sense of recurring design elements that appear in several apps.
By searching for closet wardrobe organizer app, I’ve found some similar apps. Many of these apps are clearly geared towards women with their design. I’d prefer a unisex, minimal design. The nicest one I’ve found is Closet+, but it’s only for iOS. By focusing on Android for now, I have to consider that I’m losing a substantial market of women using iPhones (something like 56% of iPhone users are women, vs. 46% on Android). On the Google Play Store, there’s XZ(Closet). This one has the weather displayed. It also has what appears to be a recommendation system. This seems like a great feature that I could work on in the future. Like Closet+, it has a calendar to keep track of outfits.
Project Estimation
This is the toughest part for me. I have to estimate how long each feature might take, and what I should prioritize. For now, I will think about the bare minimum for a working prototype.
- Add items to closet
- Select items and display an outfit
- Search items
These three features are enough to have a functional app, a Minimum Viable Product (MVP). Adding items requires me to have some form of database. SQLite is well-integrated into the Android development workflow. For now, the database should only contain text entries. Selecting items can start off with just items displayed in alphabetical order by category. Searching might take a bit longer, but the documentation is available assuming I use SQLite.
I have to reassess what skills I have, and set aside some time to learn it. Next semester is going to be a little busy, so realistically I could devote an hour or two each day (instead of watching Netflix or playing video games). Some of the skills I need to pick up are Kotlin, SQLite, UI/UX for mobile, Google Drive Android API. I’ll give myself about 3 months (January to April) as a deadline to have a working prototype. First month research, design, and working on small features, second month grinding, third month testing and debugging.
In the next post, I will cover wireframing.
Resources
I’ll keep a Resources section at the bottom of each part both as a reminder to myself, as well as to help others following along.
Planning