Anywear
Reduce, Reuse, ...Rent? Circular fashion economy on college campuses.
Visual and Interation Designer
Allowing users to list apparel for short-term rentals to reduce clothing purchases for one-time wear. My team pitched Anywear to place 3rd in a design-a-thon at Rice University!
Overconsumption Core.
Short form content and creator economies are the leaders of consumer bandwagons. We've seen this firsthand with water bottle brands over the years. It was the HydroFlask, the Stanley, then the Owala today. Overconsumption core—buying things you don't need—is particularly pervasive in fashion, where microtrends rule.
Online retailers answer the call for new styles with dirt-cheap prices, contributing to haul buying and impulse shopping, especially among young adults.
Today's fashion economy looks linear. Textiles are made into apparel, purchased, then fall out of trend—and end up in landfills or oversaturated donation centers, never to be worn again (
Fashion Revolution).
As wardrobes get fuller, older pieces leave the rotation. Even when clothes are donated, collection centers like Goodwill end up trashing their overflow. Ultimately, textile waste accumulates and is exported to landfills offshore.
But what if we could make fashion economy cyclical?
The Status Quo
Aside from social media influence, college events and community activities also contribute to apparel consumption.
“People use Shein...I [usually buy] clothing items from Amazon and return them after I am done. Very convenient though it’s probably unethical.”
Katie, a college dancer, on costuming
Other students admitted that during holidays, they would bring home clothing they didn't wear frequently due to limited closet space. International students who can't return home often said they often donated clothing.
Product Intent
From niche scenarios like performing arts to ubiquitous needs like professional attire, I wanted to target a variety of users. I identified three goals to guide feature development.
01 / Give students the opportunity to “make back” money on unworn purchases
02 / Allow students to rent clothes for one-time events (e.g. formals)
03 / Create circular fashion economy microcosms across university campuses
01 / Give students the opportunity to “make back” money on unworn purchases
02 / Allow students to rent clothes for one-time events (e.g. formals)
03 / Create circular fashion economy microcosms across university campuses
User lifetime earnings and revenue
03 / Create circular fashion economy microcosms across university campuses
Feature Ideation
INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
I first identified core features, then roughly laid out the product's information architecture.
TRANSACTION CONFIRMATION
Unlike secondhand marketplaces that support delivery and fulfillment like Depop, Anywear's transactions are in person, with the app only facilitating payment and outreach.
Both the lender and the renter need to verify exchanges before any payment is executed, so I added a mechanism for both users to indicate the successful completion of an exchange.
1) Preventing Accidental Confirmations: Button press interaction to "unlock" the slider to add friction
2) Natural Language: Number of days remaining is more meaningful than dates to users!
REVIEW SYSTEM
User testimonies help to mitigate distrust. To encourage users to leave reviews, I included a simple 5-star rating system and tags for easy access with an optional text area for comments.
Reviews can only be left once upon transaction completion. Average ratings are viewable on lender profiles.
COMMUNITIES
Communities provides a way to lend and borrow within private groups of individuals.
DESIGN SYSTEMS
To maintain consistency quickly, I created a few components for repeated use across different features and flows.
Meet Anywear.
See how our two-sided marketplace creates circular fashion economies, on college campuses and beyond.
To Rent
CURATED FEED + FILTERS
Open to an infinite feed tailored to your taste and filter by popular styles with toggle chips.
PRODUCT SEARCH
Search for available rentals by keywords or images, then filter to date ranges to match when you’ll need the apparel.
RENTAL DETAILS
Rental listings display basic information like brand and tagged size, but also include rent-mindful details like care instructions and measured dimensions.
To Lend
CREATE LISTINGS
Seamlessly create product listings by taking images to pre-populate attributes like care instructions and brand.
AR MEASUREMENTS
Add measurements without a ruler or measuring tape! LiDAR enabled devices can capture clothing dimensions in-app.
FINALIZING POSTS
Add finishing details to your post and select your audience (public, communities) before posting!
LOOKING FORWARD
To validate and evaluate Anywear, I thought of metrics and questions that would need to be answered.
Conversion Rates — Are people signing up? Are they dormant? Creating listings?
User Feedback — How often does Anywear have to mitigate lender/renter conflicts?
Monetization — What model can we adopt to keep Anywear operationally feasible?
Anywear taught me how to leverage the online world to facilitate transactions in facilitate offline settings.
Designing two-sided markets is tough.
I took full ownership of the renter flow, and figuring out when and how to facilitate transactions proved to be challenging — how could I ensure accountability between lenders and renters?
Adequate user control.
Task automation with LiDAR and text recognition (OCR) is cool — so long as we anticipate errors and allow users to manually correct them.
Ultimately, what started off as a "simple" idea ended up raising endless questions regarding safety concerns and discussions about how to deliver a feasible product to market. Although fictional in practice, Anywear proved to be a thoughtful exercise in product ideation.
Huge thanks to my friends Haley Ho and Amy Liu for bringing Anywear to life! Forever grateful for this collaborative (and sleepless) experience :)
