Changing the Traditional Lingerie Shopping Experience Through Interaction Design

Despite the digital age, and Internet of Things, bringing shopping to the comfort of one’s living rooms, at the click of the mouse, lingerie shopping, in India, however, has not been able to change the prevalent mind-set of women. Women in India, we find, have stuck to the time tested traditional mode of physical visits to their favourite shops. The reasons primarily being to physically try them on and avoid the cumbersome process of online returns. Through this study, we, the authors, seek to help women overcome their inherent inhibitions, elevating their offline shopping experience. This has been arrived at through a set of user-centric design methods, addressing the issues confronted by women during shopping. In the course of the study, we found that women predominantly spent much of their time (a) picking brassier styles, (b) checking brassiere sizes and (c) closeted in trial rooms, before making their final purchases, if any. The study has evolved a concept, which optimises the search for lingerie in stores, saves frequent visitation to trial rooms and facilitates brands understand better customers’ trial choices and purchasing patterns. The inherent benefits of the proposed solution and future scopes for possible adoption have also been detailed in the study.

Authors and Affiliations

1. User Experience Design, MIT-ID, Pune, India

   S. Navyashree & Aasta Mawlikar

2. User Experience Design, UXD, MIT-ID, Pune, India

   Wricha Mishra

Corresponding author

Correspondence to S. Navyashree .

Editors and Affiliations

1. Centre for Product Design and Manufacturing, Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, Karnataka, India

   Amaresh Chakrabarti

2. IDC School of Design, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai, India

   Ravi Poovaiah

3. IDC School of Design, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai, India

   Prasad Bokil

4. IDC School of Design, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai, India

   Vivek Kant

Appendix

Questionnaire: Section 1.

• Age, occupation and salary range (Below 1 LPA - Above 12 LPA).

• Bra size and the price range of your lingerie? (Below 500 - Above 2500)

• How often do you shop for lingerie?

• Preferred choice of brand?

• Where do you usually shop for lingerie?

• Why do you prefer offline lingerie shopping?

• What problems have you faced during offline shopping?

• Where do you spend the most amount of time while lingerie shopping?

• Do you take assistance from the sales representatives? If yes, Why?

  Section 1.

• Choose the appropriate bra for the following clothes:

  

  Quiz pictures.

• Out of seven, how many responses did you guess?

• How did you get to know about the styles of bras and pairing of clothes?

  (Sales Representative, Trial & Error, Research, Advertisement, Word Of Mouth, Still Don’t Know, Don’t Care).

• Is it important to know which bra to wear for what type of clothing?

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