Fashion Week was once the exclusive domain of fashion editors, buyers and affluent clients, but it now attracts well over 200,000 attendees and a massive online audience. As editors and influencers Instagram runway looks from the front row, consumers are now familiar with designers' work far in advance of it landing in stores. With this in mind, WME-IMG and AGT International created a joint venture called HEED, a platform for bringing fans closer to their passion. HEED then partnered with NYFW to create the event's official app and asked Harley & Co to lead UX and design of the app.

Accessible fashion was the core focus of the app. The target audience of the app are fashion fans following events from home. We worked to bring the runway, industry influencers, and shareable opportunities to users through live, continuous content and unique interaction design.

My first project for Harley, I audited the strategy then created UX flows, wireframes, and sitemap for the development team. Once finished, I began design in Sketch and created prototypes in InVision. I introduced both Sketch and InVision into Harley's workflow with this project. Following design, I did animations with Hype and used GitHub for the QA process.

HEED is the first of its kind to acknowledge the industry shake-up by making shows previously reserved for fashion insiders much more accessible to a global audience in real-time. It also has a live feed of articles, videos, looks, and even playlists from the shows. So as fashion week rapidly becomes 52 weeks a year, HEED will continue to keep users informed of the latest fashion trends and news.

The HEED ethos is all about taking users behind the scenes, through the crowd, and into the data to give unprecedented, personal access to events. Today’s digitally engaged consumers expect more of an ‘experience’ and HEED brings this, not only through live-streaming shows and trending content, but through AMAs with industry insiders as well. It’s one of my favorite features of the app because it gives users the opportunity to directly engage with fashion experts and ask them anything they want to know from who to watch as the big designer to what next season's must-have is. It’s such an interesting, modern approach to fashion week that I think more and more users will come to expect.

Just as designers Rebecca Minkoff, Proenza Schouler and Burberry move towards the new business model of rolling out “see now, buy now” collections, HEED is also making fashion week shoppable by offering exclusive access to items from HEED's online retail partner, Spring, as well as beauty kits curated by Violet Gray and limited-edition HEED fashion hoodies designed by Heron Preston.
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This is just beginning, the design and development of HEED was agile and very fast-paced to get it in the hands of users for Fashion Week. In an industry keen to experiment and embrace new ideas and trends each season, it will be exciting to see how HEED will evolve as fashion begins to embrace technology.