Stitch Fix - Concept Pitched Internally

Role: Senior Stylist, UX/UI Designer, Content Designer

Core Responsibilities: UX/UI Design | Content Design

The Opportunity

I was a Senior Stylist and Content Designer at Stitch Fix when I put this together. Product design wasn't my job at the time. This was my own concept, and I took it to the design team as a pitch.

Stitch Fix's model is built on volume, since the service works by sending people more clothes than they're going to keep. That sits awkwardly next to a company that talks openly about its environmental and social impact and makes a point of featuring sustainable brands.

Styling is what made the tension impossible to ignore. Over my time there I worked with thousands of new and returning clients, many of them receiving a box every month, and that adds up to an untenable amount of clothing to even fathom. I wanted to see whether a feature could close some of that gap rather than just apologize for it, so I designed a donation program where users send back gently used clothes and earn credit toward Stitch Fix services in return.

The constraint I actually cared about

The interesting part of this project wasn't inventing a feature; it was fitting one into a product that already existed. Stitch Fix had an established app, an established design system, and flows that people already knew how to use, and anything I added had to feel like it had always been there. That meant working inside the company's visual language and finding the places in existing flows where something new could attach without disrupting them, which was far more useful practice than designing from nothing would have been. It also meant the pitch had to be realistic about what it was asking engineering to build.

The Research

Competitive Analysis | Market Research | User Interviews

Beyond competitive analysis and market research, I spent time on-site at a local consignment shop talking with seven people about their donation habits, five who donate regularly and two who don't. Including the two non-donors was the most useful decision I made, because their reasons for not bothering were much more actionable than the donors' enthusiasm was.

What came through most clearly was that people wanted convenience above everything, scheduling that fit around their lives rather than the other way around, real transparency about where their clothes actually end up, and an obvious way to see and spend whatever credit they earned.

The User

User Persona | User Journey | Storyboard | Sitemap

Using these interview findings and user needs/wants, I then set out to create a persona that would reflect who the ideal user could be and begin to chart out their user experience using the feature. Casey was born out of my collective research and interview takeaways and served as a jumping-off point to begin to start brainstorming how she could come to discover and use the Stitch Fix donation feature and what would be the best design solutions for her. In order to dig into the user mindset, I put together a comprehensive persona profile, charted out before/after user journeys focused on her current donation processes (based largely on user experiences that were collected during interviews) and an aspiring process while using the new Stitch Fix donation feature, and a storyboard depicting her pathway to and a potential experience with the new donation feature.

Meet Casey:

Once I was able to frame Casey's state of mind and map out her current donating experiences and a likely path using the Stitch Fix feature, I started to think about elements of information architecture for the app itself and what screens I would need to design to successfully meet her needs and expectations and visualized them into a sitemap of the existing Stitch Fix app structure.

Building the Product

Sketching | Mid-Fidelity Wireframes | Wireflows

With the sitemap and information architecture charted out, I was able to begin to ideate potential layouts and build out content sections for the feature. I spent time experimenting with varying content arrangements and research-based features until I found a layout that made sense within the scope of user needs, wants, and the existing structure and visual guidelines of the existing app.

Using my sketches as a frame of reference, I then re-created them in Figma to mock up the mid-fidelity wireframes while also annotating the content sections and features to describe their purpose, potential user interactions, and animations.

After mapping out a provisional user path and flow and creating the wireframes to showcase this, I was able to create a visual wireflow that would chart out the likely user pathways while using the app itself in preparation for usability testing. I focused on scheduling flows, appraising an item, tracking a donation package, confirming user environmental/social impact, and using credits during the checkout flow of the shop feature.

What testing changed

Test Synthesis | Affinity Map

I ran five sessions against a prototype. Two things came back clearly. The scheduling screens had weak hierarchy and confusing CTA wording, and people couldn't tell the editing screen from the confirmation screen, so I reworked the sizing and the copy to separate them properly. More significantly, nobody understood the credit system: how credits converted, where to see them, or what they were worth. I added a credit section to the Donation Stats screen and surfaced credit information on individual product pages so the conversion was visible at the point where it mattered.

Final Solutions

High-Fidelity Wireframes | Figma Prototype

After conducting usability testing, I was left with a list of changes and user suggestions to consider in the priority revision phase of this project. I focused on adjusting some confusing CTA wording and content sizing on the scheduling screens for a clearer visual balance and to establish a visual hierarchy between content sections and to differentiate between the editing and confirmation screens. Users also called out the lack of information about the credit system and where to learn more and see credit conversion, so I included more context into credits by adding a credit content section on the Donation Stats & Credits screen and added credit information and availability to the product page for specific conversion clarification.

Reflections

What happened to the pitch?

I took the concept to the Stitch Fix design team. It didn't move forward, and I have no reason to think anything that came later was connected to it. 

What I'd point at instead is that the read was right. Stitch Fix has since launched Closet Clean Out in partnership with ThredUp, and it runs on the same basic mechanic I'd designed around: send in your gently used clothes, earn Stitch Fix credit, spend it back into the service. Their version tiers payouts by brand and condition, so a designer bag returns a very different amount than a fast fashion dress, which is the same problem my Luxe appraisal flow was built to solve. They also included kit tracking, which was one of the needs that came up most often in my interviews. 

I'd obviously rather have designed the thing that shipped, but watching the company arrive at the same shape independently a few years later is reasonable evidence that the opportunity was real and that the credit loop was the right way into it.

Check out the launched initiative here: Stitch Fix x ThredUp Closet Clean Out

What I'd change now

The biggest miss is that I never considered a partnership. I used ThredUp as a competitive framework while I was designing the feature, so they were sitting right there in my analysis the whole time, and it never once occurred to me to treat them as a collaborator instead of a competitor. That's the exact move Stitch Fix eventually made, and it's a much better answer than building the whole thing in house.

I'd also simplify the appraisal flow. A photo-based appraisal for high-value pieces is reasonable enough on paper, but I wasn't accounting for the number of customers Stitch Fix actually has or for the technical load that feature would have invited at that volume. The Stitch Fix and ThredUp program handles it with brand and condition tiers instead, which does most of the same work without asking anyone to photograph and submit anything.