"The Furniture"
Have you ever seen something outstanding? A car, a phone or just a mug so perfectly designed that you wanted to have it in your flat? Some of us had that feeling and I'm one of them.I’m crazy about furniture, especially chairs. That’s why I decided to create this application. An application that makes looking for furniture easier.
For who am I creating:
We are all dreamers, and we love to create stories in our minds and think about the way our future will look like. We love to collect ideas.
Person #1
Some of us are interior designers, and we want to find all the best fittings to making our projects even better designed, comfortable or just more capacious - places where we would love to work, share ideas and spend free time. As designers, we want to create places that will be not only liked but loved as well.
Person #2
Also, some of us are still students. We all need to do our best to prepare for this tough exam. As architecture or interior design students we need to know the best designers, their biographies and projects. To do so we are browsing the internet.
Person #3
Maybe some of us have just seen something, and they want to find out: Who did it? What is the name of this project? Where can I buy it?
Person #4
On the other hand there may be a designer crafting chairs. He may be looking for inspiration, but also be willing to show his works off to the world.
Problem:
What you just have read is the problem and where the idea for this project came from to me at itself. We are looking for something standing behind words ‘furniture’, ‘inspiration’, ‘history’ and ‘design’. We are looking for information. But we need to put a lot of effort in order to find what we want.
How do we search?
When asked about searching for something, most of us will probably say just a one single word 'Google' or name another browser. In fact the way we look for informations depends on various conditions. If looking for a short biography, we will probably choose Wikipedia. When searching for beautiful photos or inspirations, we will scroll down the Pinterest. On the other hand some of us may also use Google images to find a product, as we take a lot of pictures and save them to our smartphone's galleries 'just in case'.
Interviews and empathy maps:
I started with talking to my friends. Some of them are design or architecture students. I wanted to know where and how do they find products and objects like furniture.
I collected five personal and twenty online interviews, then put everything into a mind map. Therefore it was easier for me to see all connections and relations between personas and what they were looking for.
What I find out was that people don't know where to look for the furniture they want. They try to search by names, companies (like Vitra) or years. Everyone admits they don't have any web or mobile application which are still available on the market.
I started looking for some similar applications but for different products. So I took a loop on What da font, Magnus and Artfinder.
Idea:
At the end of my concept work I came out with an idea for application with two main functions:
First one as ‘a core’ and heart of the project is giving you a whole online library. You can browse four categories - Years (which contains projects made in 60', 70’ or later), Designers (categorized by surname but you can also select ‘country’ filter), Type of product (chair, desk, stool), and Destination of your furniture (bathroom, wardrobe).
The second one, which is more technologically advanced gives you an ability to ‘scan’ object standing in front of you or upload it form galleries and search the library. As a user, you can save a product and add it to one of your personal libraries named ‘collections’. In the end, I wanted to make a community of design lovers, artist, interior designers and companies, where they can create profiles for designers and their products. In the end, after verification they will be able to sell them through adding links to online stores.
Wireframe and hi-fi design:
I had some problems with the menu and switching between categories. I wanted to make it as easy as possible with no hamburger menu. Just one click and you change category. That's why I started to look for alternative solutions. I found Fubiz mobile version of a website and I just simply fell in love with it. The menu works like a slider and the user chose section by simply swiping it.
