H&M On Demand
An ambitious innovation project to help democratise fashion in a more sustainable and data driven way.
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Role: Lead Product & Communications Designer
The fashion industry’s environmental impact is undeniable.
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We set out to build a state of the art platform that would produce custom designed garments, on demand.
Simply put:
“We don’t make it, until we know you want it.”
Context
Our customers were used to H&M.com. We had no desire to craft an unfamiliar fashion experience. Instead we wanted it to feel like they were still in the H&M world, just a new corner of it.
My priority was to create a customisation experience that felt seamless, intuitive and ultimately, a joy. This was meant to be fun.
We were also an innovation project, which meant budget and time were against us. I made the call to incorporate the best in class customisation experiences, whilst ensuring it never felt too “techy”.
my approach
Early mobile customisation concepts
User testing showed the journey worked but I felt it was still clunky, busy, functional. Like you were designing a hiking rucksack.
My focus became refinement.
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Removing what I could and making what remained clear but elegant.
refinement
Early desktop customisation concept
Refined desktop customisation concept
I mentioned joy before. It was really important to us that the customer had fun and that meant reducing artistic friction.
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Our solution to this was to provide pre-customised jackets as starting points plus the ability to save multiple designs. A large, multi angle, gallery made it quick and easy to see your designs.
Inspiration
Inspiration & My Designs - Mobile
Inspiration & My Designs - Desktop
This project was an experiment with a cap limit of 1,500 jackets.
Would it work? Did customers truly want this?
Our site crashed on launch.
The demand was enormous. It completely exceeded our expectations and our project was repeatedly highlighted and applauded internally by senior management.
We did an incredible job with limited resources. In hindsight, I’d have allocated more time to early user testing — it could have led us to a more elegant solution, faster.
impact & Reflections
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