Project Overview
Outware Mobile designed and built the Melbourne Spring Fashion Week (MSFW) app for the City of Melbourne in 2012. The MSFW app provided patrons with event details, maps, an integrated mobile and retail shopping experience and access to designer information as well as event specific promotions.
The main objective of the app was to enhance the MSFW experience. The use of QR codes in the Look Stop Shop feature facilitates engagement between retailers and patrons by providing users with access to exclusive offers and encouraging them to explore Melbourne’s unique fashion scene.
The app also provides event details to the entire program for MSFW, including directions to event venues, ticketing information and social media integration. The app promoted MSFW to a broad audience, while also encouraging user engagement online across various social platforms.
Project Commissioner
Project Creator
Team
Project Management: Peter Collins
User Experience Design: Mica Huyhn
Visual Design: Peter Talbot
iOS Development: Ankitha Sheeba
Project Brief
Melbourne Spring Fashion Week is about showcasing emerging designers and local retailers in the city’s fashion industry, in order to inspire the audience to explore Melbourne and discover its unique style and fashion-city status.
The City of Melbourne asked Outware Mobile to create an app for MSFW that would enrich the MSFW experience and make it easy for patrons to get to events and find out more about designers and retailers. The brief was to create an app that would:
• Add value to the MSFW experience – It was not enough for the app to simply display event details, it had to encourage user participation and facilitate patronage to MSFW events.
• Be simple and intuitive to use and focussed on the end user experience.
• Appeal to a design savvy audience – Patrons of MSFW are looking for innovation and creativity in design. The app has to be attractive to this market.
• Stay true to the established MSFW brand – The look and feel of the app has to remain within the MSFW brand guidelines.
Project Need
Outware Mobile values innovation and creativity in all its projects, while still focussing on usability and intuitive design. Mobile apps are a rapidly growing media platform, with which consumers are becoming more and more familiar. The need for brands to provide a mobile experience for consumers is now a given expectation. For MSFW, Outware Mobile used an existing technology such as QR codes combined with an understanding of mobile user behaviour to produce a unique app experience for MSFW: Look Stop Shop.
The Look Stop Shop feature provides an integrated digital and retail shopping experience for patrons of MSFW events. Users are able to research fashion pieces and access designer information as well as exclusive offers available at local retailers using the app. Users can also share this information with their social networks, creating community engagement with MSFW events.
Design Challenge
The MSFW app is targeted at an audience with an existing appreciation for quality and sophistication in design. Not only does the app have to appeal to this style-sensitive market, it has to be intuitive to use, and most importantly, showcase designer fashion and make that the star. To overcome this challenge, Outware Mobile’s design focussed on creating a simple and elegant interface that allows the content to shine while still maintaining the app’s utility and staying true to the MSFW branding.
In addition to this, the entire MSFW app was designed and built in only 30 days to ensure that it was out in the market in time for the event and other coordinated marketing collateral. This added pressure for the Outware Mobile design and development team to meet the brief first time, since there wasn’t much time for multiple rounds of feedback and changes from the client.
Sustainability
The MSFW app was designed and built completely in Melbourne by Outware Mobile.
Outware Mobile places a strong emphasis on sustainability and the environment by encouraging a next to paperless workplace, providing facilities to support sustainable travel to work and choosing to purchase recycled and reusable consumables where possible.
Apps developed by Outware Mobile are designed to be flexible enough for future enhancements. The MSFW app, while being season specific, is architectured to allow for additional updates in following years that are cost-effective and open to changes, thereby increasing the app’s lifespan.
Tags
Digital Experience - Mobile
This award celebrates innovation and creativity in design of a unique user experience in the combination of text, audio, still images, animation, video, and interactive content for mobile. Consideration given to clarity of communication and the matching information style to audience.
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