Challenge Summary
Welcome to the "Cingo - Retail Community Portal Design Concepts Challenge". Cingo is looking to design a community portal where retail technology professionals can register and become part of a larger "retail community". Retail technology professionals can hone their strategy, find suppliers, get answers, compare notes and discover how to make the most of their technology within a community/sharing portal/site. This retail portal content will allow a member the ability to track and compare technology products and solutions used by the world’s leading retailers so they can make better decisions, build business cases, find the best suppliers, and understand their customers better.
The idea is to design concepts and ideas around an online community for retail technology professionals.
Let us know if you have any questions!
Round 1
Initial screens we would like to review and provide design feedback on:
01. Welcome Screen (Desktop and Tablet)
02. User sign up (Desktop)
03. Community Dashboard (Retailer) (Desktop)
05. Vendor Profile (Retailer) (Desktop)
Please number your screens (01, 02, 03, 04 etc)
Round 2
Final screens plus any checkpoint feedback updates:
01. Welcome Screen (Desktop and Tablet)
02. User sign up (Desktop)
03. Community Dashboard Screen (Retailer) (Desktop and Tablet)
04. Vendor Dashboard Screen (Vendor) (Desktop)
05. Vendor Profile (Retailer) (Desktop and Tablet)
06. Add Products (Vendor) (Desktop)
07. Vendor Selection, Comparison and Matrix Screens (Retailer) (Desktop)
Please number your screens (01, 02, 03, 04 etc)
Challenge description
In this challenge, we are looking for your initial design concepts and ideas that will help us graphically realize the user interface for our new "retail" community portal.
The portal will need to be a responsive design - we are looking for both desktop and tablet screen treatments.
-Desktop - content should fit within 1024px - the actual design could be larger as long as content fits within 1024px
-Tablet - content should fit within 768px
Design goals
- The goal is to provide a clean, simple and professional look for a "retail" community portal. What features would be interesting and key to the first time member?
- Review the provided wireframes (this should help give you ideas) - think about community design and what might be some cool features?
Suggested Screens
Community Scenario:
We want to bring retail technology professionals together and provide them access to a retail community and a database of retail technology companies.
Scenario: Community Member (Retailer)
As a retail technology professional I want to be able to join in user groups that are independent and empowered.
- Have a profile within the community that is linked to other social applications that I use so I don’t need to re-enter information
- Search directory information about retail technology companies (vendors)
- Join user groups that are independent and only accessible to other customers of the retail technology provider.
- Compare different vendor technologies
- User groups/forums
- Vendor discovery/analysis
- Vendor Rankings
- Actionable insight (graphs/metrics etc)
Scenario: Vendor (Retail Technology Company)
As a retail technology vendor I want to be able to grow my client base and understand what my clients want/need and currently use.
- Have a company listing within the retail community that is linked to other social applications that we use
- Attract a vibrant community of users that can enhance my products by providing feedback
- Be able to view retailers ‘technology maps’ so I can understand what they use.
- Listing of products and services
- User group facilitation
- Customer satisfaction surveys
General note: Please use the wireframes as informative only - you are free to change anything and come up with a better idea to display the content - this is strongly encouraged. We want to present your design concepts and ideas to help pitch this project.
Navigation: You will need to work on the navigation, this is a new application/site, so you need to think about the navigation and what makes sense. The wireframes are not complete (so the navigation is not complete). We are looking for your suggestions on how the interactions on this portal could work.
01. Welcome Screen
- User is not logged in.
- Should look professional and attract users to sign-up/register.
- What community features (before login) might be interesting here?
- Please reference welcome-screen.jpg as a starting point
02. User Sign Up/Registration Screens (Retailer & Vendor)
- User is presented with a sign-up/registration form that he will need to fill in order to join the community.
- A user can be a Retail Professional or a Retail Vendor (they would have different profiles in the community)
- See vendor-details.jpg as a starting point
03. Community Dashboard Screen (Retailer)
- This is the main screen from where the user can start exploring the retail community
- From here he needs to be able to get to the rest of the screens (think about navigation!)
- Retail Professional and Retail Vendor would have different home screens
- Retail Professional can search for Vendors
- Retail Professional might have news feeds or forum feeds
- Retail Professional might have infographics or analysis items they need to review/act on
- A Retail Professional could follow a vendor and receive status/product updates or participate in surveys and user groups
Don’t forget to expand the ideas and improve!
04. Vendor Dashboard Screen (Vendor)
- This is the main screen from where a Vendor can manage their profile, products, surveys and vendor based communities.
- Vendors have profiles within the community - they can manage/edit their profile from this page
- Vendors can create and post products and services
- Vendors can create communities around their product (this is useful for surveys and testing)
- Vendors might have infographics or analysis items they need to review/act on
Don’t forget to expand the ideas and improve!
05. Vendor Profile (Retailer)
- As a Community member (Retailer) I can search and find Vendors
- This is the Vendor "profile" page where I can learn about the vendor and their products
- Please reference vendor-profile.jpg as a starting point
06. Add Products (Vendor)
- After a Retail Vendor registers they can create products that any community member can search and find
- Please reference vendor-product-creation.jpg as a starting point
07. Vendor Selection, Comparison and Matrix Screens (Retailer)
- As a Community member (Retailer) I can search, filter and compare Vendors and see them in a comparison "Vendor Matrix"
- This will help me compare technologies and realize what I might need to be using or ask questions about
- Please reference vendor-selection-1.jpg, vendor-selection-matrix-2.jpg as a starting point
Branding guidelines:
Please see the attached reference and brand
Judging Criteria
- Cleanliness of your graphics and design.
- Concepts! How well you think about this application and graphically show us your ideas.
Target Audience
- Retailer Community!
Supported Platforms
- Desktop, Tablets
Submission & Source Files
Preview Image
Please create your preview image as one (1) 1024x1024px JPG or PNG file in RGB color mode at 72dpi and place a screenshot of your submission within it.
Submission File
Submit JPG/PNG for your submission files.
Source Files
All original source files of the submitted design. Files should be created in Adobe Photoshop and saved as layered PSD file, or Adobe Illustrator as a layered AI file.
Final Fixes
As part of the final fixes phase you may be asked to modify your graphics (sizes or colors) or modify overall colors. We may ask you to update your design or graphics based on checkpoint feedback.
Please read the challenge specification carefully and watch the forums for any questions or feedback concerning this challenge. It is important that you monitor any updates provided by the client or Studio Admins in the forums. Please post any questions you might have for the client in the forums.