CLIENT
ABOUT
In 2001, Dylan Lauren pioneered the world’s largest confectionery emporium and lifestyle brand, Dylan’s Candy Bar. Its mission is to merge fashion, art, and pop culture with candy to ignite the creative spirit and inner child in everyone that visits. This innovative concept has changed the way the world experiences candy today.
Dylan’s Candy Bar houses over 7,000 confections, boasting an unparalleled selection of candies and candy-related gifts from around the world. Dylan’s Candy Bar continues to attract people of all ages with its state-of-the-art décor and trend-setting product mix.
CHALLENGE
Create a Customer Experience called Design Shoppe, where people can design fun, personalized labels to place on Dylan’s wide array of candy containers, such as the famous plastic paint can.
SOLUTION
Design a kiosk app that makes designing labels an easy and delightful experience. Before writing a single line of code, I wanted to understand the context-of-use fully. How would real humans interact with our technology set in a busy store? I spent time at the Union Square, New York location observing customers and asking questions about what they would like to see on a personalized label for more insight. With research in place, I set out to define the platform’s Feature Set. When I separated signal-from-noise, it was clear users’ wanted to have photos of themselves and family on their labels. To make the application satisfy this user need, we decided to allow users to take a photo using the iPad camera and select images from Facebook as a label background. To add to the overall Customer Experience, I added the ability to share their creations on Facebook with the world.
With the feature set documented, I built a clickable prototype using Hi-Fi wireframes. For Visual Design, I drew inspiration from the stores’ décor and existing branding. I ran tests with the Dylan’s team and a small focus group to discover any usability problems. I made iterations to the design until the user experience was seamless.
RESULTS
Design Shoppe was successful from day one and remains a great draw for Dylan’s brick-and-mortar locations.