Making sneaker care widely available for all, a case study.
A short tale on how I went to figure out a possible solution for a personal problem.
Let’s Get Started
From collecting stamps, letters and antiques in the 1980s and earlier, as we are heading towards 2025, an immense collection of shoes, in slang sneakers has been a hot trend. People are buying shoes that are limited in supply but insatiable in demand.
What’s the buzz about?
- Sneakers are not just worn for sports anymore but have become a must-have in people’s wardrobes.
- Globally, the sneaker industry is projected to be worth approximately US $95 billion.
- The market size is expected to double at an exponential rate owing to its success among millennials and Gen-Zs who look at the industry as a catalyst for self-expression, freedom of choice, and opinion.
But while there are solutions to maintain and preserve other collectibles, sneaker care is widely available but sneaker heads are not aware of it.
Surprising right? Let’s figure it out ⬇️
The Problem
While sneakers are the latest “asset” in town, with an estimated market size of $250m–$300m in India itself. Sneaker heads (a sports shoe enthusiasts), including myself usually face the problem of cleaning our shoes. With each shoe costing about $180 or more it is important to maintain it and preserve it while you wear it.
Goals
- Make Sneaker Care more widely accessible.
- Understand the efforts that go into maintaining the sneakers.
- Understanding the Sneaker Culture.
A few pointers to consider
- Educate users about sneaker laundries, further creating a new source of revenue for laundries.
- People share their sneaker collections virtually.
- How to keep the user engaged with the app after the primary goal is achieved(sneaker laundry).
Have come up with features of how users can still engage with the app after users getting the laundry done. It’s part of the design.
Deliverables
Secondary Research
Culture and Market Size
As the big footwear corporations like Adidas and Nike continue to roll out exclusive collections and collaborations, the demand for sneakers as a must-have fashion accessory has never been higher as sales and resale values soar.
The market value of sneakers in the past years has gone up by 130% in the last 10 years and is further expected to go up by 200%.
Alongside the regular retail sales, what is pushing the numbers in the sneaker business out of the park is the resale market, where it is all about ‘cop’ and ‘drop’.
In sneaker lingo, ‘drop’ is when popular labels such as Nike, Adidas, Jordan, and others, announce new launches, and ‘copping’ is the act of successfully buying a pair of sneakers.
A sneaker by Nike or Adidas with a retail price of Rs 20,000, can be sold for as high as Rs 2 lakh in the resale market.
The sneaker resale industry, which essentially involves buying limited edition shoes (a practice known as “copping”) at retail prices, then reselling them for a higher price, is projected to spike to a global valuation of $30 billion by 2030.
India is the second-largest global consumer of footwear. The idea of buying shoes as collectors’ items or with the goal of investment, instead of simply pragmatic footwear, is just taking off.
“Indians love status displays, like gold or property.” Shoes are the same.
The resale market has grown from a niche space to a multibillion-dollar industry in the last decade and India’s digital playground has proved to be conducive to this sneaker culture.
The global rise of basketball, celebrity culture, and technology has created the perfect platform for sneakers as a form of status and self-expression. Popular athletes have their own brand of sneakers, and it doesn’t stop at basketball.
While gold is not really the best form of investment today, it’s exciting to track how sneakers have outperformed the alternate assets, and that in itself is pretty motivational and significant.
Why do you need a freaking sneaker laundry?
Shoes are someone’s priced possession and if it is an expensive one then you would love to give it the treatment it deserves so as to extend its life.
But what can you do to clean your shoes?
- If it is a sports shoe, you may use a detergent with water to clean it, but there is a risk of the shoe being disfigured or it may lose its shape.
- If it is a leather shoe, then it is all the more difficult because you can’t do much except polish the shoes. A suede shoe will require a process totally different from a top-grain leather shoe.
Shoe Laundry is a concept that provides a systematic cleaning process for your priced possession.
For every shoe, there are literally different procedures and the tough part is:
- It’s too much effort.
- How do you make sure you’ve got the right apparatus to clean everything?
- The fear of messing up the shoe, is expensive so I’d rather stick to the professionals who do it.
Primary Research
Where do you find sneaker laundries?
So 2 out of the 3 daily dry-cleaners and laundries do shoe laundry that I found online. They had very nominal rates and were aware of the various types of shoes as well.
After talking to them, I realised they’ve barely gotten any orders from anyone in regards to shoe cleaning. They further mentioned that they specialised in cleaning all sorts of shoes.
I also came across platforms that solely do shoe laundry. I got a wider understanding of the procedure and pricing. Shoe Laundry was not a necessity before the sneaker industry started booming in together.
User Interviews
The reason why I conducted user interviews here is the fact that I feel talking to a user gives me more insights as they usually narrate personal experiences. My usual way of going about conducting user interviews U is to record the interview and later take notes from the interview if I am doing it alone.
Final Set of Questions:
- What sort of shoes do you prefer?
- How many shoes do you own?
- What’s your most expensive pair?
- Do you clean your shoes?
- If provided as a service, would you pay to get your shoes cleaned?
- How much would you pay?
On a Group Call:
3 people on a call.
Insights
- People don’t care about their daily wear shoes, but the ones that wear on special occasions they tend to put extra effort there. This made me think of the fact that we have different types of shoes. It is not just Jordans that one would want to get cleaned.
- They don’t clean their shoes after every single use, and after a point, once they are old, they might not care about cleaning them as it is too much hassle. Laziness and effort is one point where this application would come into use.
- Shoe cleaning as a service for some was a luxury, but for 2 out of 3 users it was a necessity.
- Users would pay more if the shoe were expensive making sure that the price doesn’t hinder quality.
- Time is also an issue. Users should know the time things will take. Clothes dry cleaners don’t have a definite timeline. Hence, I decided to add a fixed timeline that’d be required for the dry cleaners to adhere. Furthermore adding a tracking mechanism makes it more “trustable”.
How did I go about solving the problem?
- Performing secondary research to find important findings to drive my initial research.
- Drafting a questionnaire for user surveys and interviews.
- Performing user interviews and user surveys on Zoom.
- Creating features based on the insights
- Building the user flow.
- Drawing wireframes on paper and converting them into frames on Figma.
- Designing Visual Screens.
Assumptions
- Assuming that the screener questionnaire has already been rolled out and participants have been short-listed.
- Assuming that the app is being designed for the Indian market.
User Flow
Sketches
This was the first step that helped me outline the app and visually imagine it.
Wireframes
Once the user flow was ready, I drew these sketches to get a better idea of how the flows might look.
Visuals
Aesthetic — Usability Effect in the App:
Users often perceive aesthetically pleasing design as design that’s more usable.
The current app design — I’ve tried to keep it minimal, symmetrical and very smooth on the eyes.
Visual research
Colour Palette: Canary is a great color and to be very honest a tough colour to pair it with. But something neon and poppy attracts sneakerheads and Gen-Z, which is also the main target audience. Hence, I decided to go with Canary. Additionally, I used white for the background as it gives a very minimal feel to the entire application.
Typography: The target group for my app varies from Gen-Z to Boomers. Hence, I wanted to keep the text style simple and refined. I went with my primary font as DM Sans and secondary for headings as Space Grotesk.
Sneaker Care Services
This part of the app lets user choose the services that they want to avail of.
Hick’s Law during the Menu Option
Hick’s Law states that the time it takes to make a decision increases with the number and complexity of choices.
That was the entire motive while I was looking at designing the services; keep it minimal and it should be easier for the user to choose a service based on his problem.
Booking Flow
After picking the services, this talks about the booking flow where the user selects the date, time and address where and when you want the sneakers to be picked.
Jakob’s Law in the Booking Flow:
Jacob’s law states that users spend most of their time on other sites. This means that users prefer your site to work the same way as all the other sites they already know.
While designing the booking flow I thought of having the design similar to what is found in other apps like Urban Company.
Shoe Deck
The feature where users will return to the app. This is more along the lines of a virtual shoe wardrobe. It lets you share your sneaker collection with literally anyone. Just get your shoes in front of the camera and while we move some boxes around, we look for the exact pair for you to add and it in your wardrobe.
Conclusion
What did I learn?
Designing the app has been a challenging and rewarding journey. One of the major challenges was to make the booking flow for the sneakers, considering what all goes on inside the sneaker industry.
I researched the sneaker industry, user needs, and what are the different services a laundry has to offer to the owners. I understood the needs of the users through the survey and conversations.
Finally, I faced the challenge of creating an engaging app both from the user experience perspective and the visual perspective.
What I could have done better?
I would work on improving my visuals further and do more iterations based on user feedback.
Context
I did this UI/UX case study as an assignment during my cohort at 10k Designers and considering sneaker care is something I struggle with, I thought I’d work on it and find a possible solution.
The End
It was fun working on the assignment since this problem statement caters to me as well. I learned so much about the sneaker industry. It was definitely an amazing experience to read and design about a problem that you face daily.
