The Gent's Guide
to Style
University of Cincinnati, DAAP • 2011
Background
The Gent’s Guide to Style was created for my undergraduate senior capstone. The capstone is an individual project that spans six month and embodies the entire brainstorm, conceptualization, design, prototyping and user testing of a product. The purpose of this capstone is to have students show that they are capable of running an entire project independently while leveraging the skills they learned over their past four years of education and co-ops. The only constraints we are given on day one is that we must create something that provides some social good, usually projects are educational or help solve a problem.
Overview
The Gents Guide to Style for the iPad, iPhone and iPod touch is an incredibly powerful interactive toolkit designed to help men make more informed decisions about what they wear. The goal of this application is to give a sense of not only the how but the why. The Gent’s Guide to Style is a series of four tools. The tools work together to help give coherent, educated suggestions for how to dress for any occasion.
The Gent’s Guide to Style was created for my undergraduate senior capstone. The capstone embodies the entire design process. Concept brainstorm, conceptualization, design, prototyping and user testing of a product.
After a month brainstorming concepts, researching, finding areas with gaps, I landed on men’s style and fashion. Inspired by GQ, Esquire and seeing the current style choices chosen by guys ages 16-22, I felt that their was a need to help educate young adult males transitioning from a high school or college environment into the professional workforce.
My Role
Note: Note: This project was done in 2011 and republished here.
As this was my undergraduate senior capstone, I was sole individual responsible for researching and discovering a problem followed by product development including personas, user research and product design.
Audience
The target audience are males age 23 to 30 who have recently graduated from college and are interested in changing to a more adult and/or professional life style. The target audience may also seeking to wear clothes that they have never had to wear before.
Solution, The Toolkit
The Occasion Guide is the key tool in navigating the complicate, but structure system of men’s style. Recommendations are based on occasion, time of day, who will be attending, and the goals of the occasion or event. The suggestions are educated, informed and based on years of tradition and styles in menswear. The supplemental tools; The How-To, Inspiration, and Handbook are are included to be solid resources for executing any of the Occasion Guide’s suggestions. With The Gents Guide to Style, there is no longer any reason why men can’t start dressing well and using their clothes as a tool for communication, increasing confidence and just having an overall better sense of style.
