Centric Visual Concept Board
A zero-to-one project, creating a new product offering that allows fashion and retail teams use real-time data from multiple business systems to visualize their products and collaborate with cross-functional teams.
Company:
Centric Software
Year:
2018
Timeframe:
1 year
Lead Product Designer
In 2017, Centric Software, a leading provider of PLM (Product Lifecycle Management) software, set out to design and build a new platform that enables fashion and retail teams to utilize real-time data from multiple business systems to visualize their products and collaborate with cross-functional teams.
Nearly every fashion company depends on physical visual media, requiring assistant designers to spend valuable time on tasks that add little value, such as printing, cutting, assembling mini-bodies, pinning fabric swatches that are hard to see, and applying post-its and stickers. If a key stakeholder cannot attend a meeting, it becomes challenging to thoroughly brief them on the decisions made. Additionally, extensive note-taking is needed to record the discussions, which can introduce human errors and lead to inefficiencies, creative misalignment, and collaboration gaps
As design lead, I collaborated closely with cross-functional teams and clients to understand workflows and business processes in the fashion and retail industry, and I designed a sandbox solution enabling fashion design teams to easily capture design intent using real-time PLM data (such as material, style, and color libraries). It also allows teams to conduct meetings with a digital catalog and track stakeholder comments and changes within the system.
Understanding current processes
Our team spent a lot of time with our clients, observing their processes and how they work. We discovered that merchandising and design teams face significant challenges, such as difficulties in visual communication and time-consuming collaboration. These challenges lead to inefficiencies, including limited accessibility to visual information and high non-value activities that consume valuable time and resources.
Prioritizing MVP features
We facilitated several workshops with our partnering clients to understand what core functionality our MVP needed to inclued at launch, so that merchandising and design teams can pilot the experience for the upcoming season.
Creating a scalable design system
After testing our prototypes with our clients, I had a better idea of what our core components were, and I put together a design system that provided a cohesive framework that enhanced consistency across our products.
The final solution
I designed a highly collaborative, visual sandbox environment where designers can easily access existing PLM libraries, develop proposals for products, and assemble collections for executive presentations.
