Shoefitr Capstone Project

Date: Spring & Summer 2012
Course: MHCI Capstone Project
Type: Team work (Team members: Joesph Boyle, Kyle Libby, and Stephanie Chow)
Team role: Research and Design co-lead
Software:  Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign, Axure, and iMovie

This was a six-month-long capstone project with a real client in industry called Shoefitr. Shoefitr is a local Pittsburgh startup providing an application for online retailers to help customers get the right size while shopping for shoes. Our goal for this project was to make the application more engaging, easy to use, and reach a wider audience.

In the Spring semester, we started this project with field research. We used different methods (Contextual Inquiry, Think-aloud, and Storytelling) to understand people's shopping behaviors both in physical shoe stores and online. We synthesized the data we obtained and summarized it into four key findings.

In the Summer semester, based on the key findings we found, we brainstormed design ideas. Throughout the iterative design process (which consisted of designing, prototyping, and evaluating), we finally came up with a short-term prototype that Shoefitr could implement right away with their existing data and technology as well as a long term vision which we envisioned Shoefitr could accomplish within the next 3 years.