LUX - 12HR SEEN Mobile Shopping App Design Challenge

Welcome to another LUX Challenge! The "LUX - 12HR SEEN Mobile Shopping App Design Challenge!". This the Eighth in a series of "Live User Experience Design Challenges" we are running! We are very excited to provide this cool design opportunity to TopCoder design studio community to showcase your FAST!! design skills!

LUX challenges provide you with an opportunity to show digital leaders from some of the largest brands in the world just how good your UX design skills are. LUX challenges are fast, fun, and have more chances for you to capture prize money. 

We want to showcase how easy it is to engage the TopCoder Design Studio community and demonstrate how well you can take ideas and turn them into great design and user experience concepts! 

Cash in on this great opportunity to prove your design skills! Best of luck to you all!

Challenge Details
The main goal of this challenge is to take the provided mobile design problem and design a simple, clean mobile user experience (UX)! We are looking for you to also think about this and what ideas/concepts do you think might be interesting to our audience?

Challenge Timeline and Rolling Checkpoint:
The challenge will start LIVE at the Cancun Mexico CMO Innovation event!
- Challenge Start at 10:00 PM EDT 10/20/14
- Challenge End at 10:00 AM EDT 10/21/14

Challenge Prizes
We are offering 8 placements plus rolling checkpoint prizes!
1) $1800
2) $1500
3) $1000
4) $500
5) $250
6) $250
7) $150
8) $150

Rolling Checkpoint Review ($50)
- Adam Morehead (adroc) and Blake Walles (bwalles) will provide a design review if you submit your initial designs by 6AM EDT 10/21/14
- Within the hour we will provide any design feedback/guidance - You must watch the forum for your feedback!
- All qualifying checkpoint submissions will win $50

Challenge Resources 
- Mood board with sample colors and typograpy and images to use in your concepts
https://drive.google.com/a/appirio.com/folderview?id=0B6CyMUG3aZWhMnJ0OFN1UVY4MHM&usp=sharing#

Design Problem 
Mobile Application = Smart Shopping Application based on user image preferences and user behaviour through the apps.
The name of our Application will be SEEN. 

Concept Description:
- We want to create a super smart shopping tool that can provide great product references to the user, not only one reference, but variants of products from different brands that might be interesting for the user. This application allows their users to capture images of any items/products that inspire them via a mobile photo upload (taken from camera directly or choose from mobile phone images directory or from social media images) and then the the application will curate specific recommendations for the user to consider buying products from variants of brands.

- Think about online stores experience and make it mobile, and add in a user generated way of browsing products. The ability to use the application to take photos of what you like...have the APP return exactly what you just took a picture of AND/OR suggest other items you would be interested based off of the APPs style algorithm. 

Application Scenarios :

1. First Scenario, User takes a picture of a running shoe. They are served up where they can buy that shoe in addition to other suggestions as to what they might be interested in from this App.  They'll be shown some track suits, and other runner gear from brands such as Nike, Addidas, and Axis. The user has a smart back end that starts to learn the users likes and dislikes and over time will start making suggestions to the user based on their activity from w/in the APP. 

2. Second Scenario, User takes a picture of a cool chair that they see in a coffee shop. This APP will returns some result where the user can purchase the chair and showcases other suggestions based off the style of that photo. They are shown brands like Design within Reach, Crate N Barrel, and Restoration Hardware. 

At the event we asked the audience to answer some simple questions to help have some fun with the is application. The results of the answers are listed below:

Logo Inspiration - "Legos"
- Use legos to inspire your logo design
- Think about the shapes and what is fun about logos

Color Palette - "Pac Man"
- Use Pac Man (anything from the Pac Man genre)
- Think beyond the yellow if needed 

Design Stype and Inspiration: "Red Hot Chili Peppers"
- This application should have a "visually stunning, louder" feel to it

Mobile Application Target Audience:
- The target audience is Shopping Maniac!
- Have some fun with this.

Mobile Storyboards - Portrait View
- Design screens for iPhone 5 portrait display (640 x 1136)
- Assume this is native iOS application
- We only need 6 screens plus the presentation screen - so pick/design what you think will "showcase" this application. You can create alternative screens to the one's listed.
- In these LUX challenge the “concepts” you propose really helps the presentation

Suggested Screens:
00. Navigation Solution
- Provides us a clear navigation concept for this application.
- Please design a navigation solution that would be easy/engaging for a the application user!

01. Splash Screen
- Provide us a simple some cool design for the splash screen
- Explore a simple logo mark for your APP design
- Simple logo for the application with the name you choose for the application
- Loading/progress bar that indicates application is launching. 
- Explore how this page needs to build/interact.

02. Dashboard Screen
- What makes sense to be on the dashboard? (keep it simple)
- Suggested images for the user based on items they have uploaded or selected?
- Set Profile?
- Main navigation?
- Summary of user activity in the apps?
- Big icons to go to upload images screen?
- Rewards infographic?

03. Upload Images Screen
- A screen where user have ability to upload images/picture from their camera, from others image apps (pinterest, instagram, flickr, etc) or from their phone image directories.
- Some scenario, you are walking along in a new city and you notice a sculpture that simply blows you away. You take a photo from your phone and instead of just sending it to Instagram or Facebook, you instead (or also) send it to the apps.
- Think of simplicity for this screen to simplify our user take/upload the images. 

04. Recommendations Screen
- After user takes/uploads an image to this App, a smart algorithm embedded to the apps will 'think' for a few seconds to curate a recommendations for you (create us some loading/'think' screen). **For the purpose of this challenge, let's assume the smart algorithm already exists as the purpose of this challenge is to just create the potential mobile user experiences by showcasing them visually and in a beautifully intuitive manner.
- The result will show a beautiful screen with several recommendations  (can be tiles, list, thumbnails, or any other layout), each of which are an instantly curated products recommendations from each specific brands from the application algorithm prediction result.
- Gamification feature in this step: As the user decides if he will tap any of the recommendations items, he would automatically see some subtle hue gradient or modal window within the items, letting the user know how close he was to the next reward. (discount, coupon, etc.) Think of including a reward infographic on the interaction or hover state of one of the items that shows the user how close they are to aceiving a reward. 
- Tapping on one recommendation items will take a user to a screen that contains images relate to their photo as categorized by. 

05. Category/ Product Offerings
- The user can quickly scan this mostly visual screen by product photography and the offerings, which look beautiful but don't show a user all the detail they will need, are joined on screen by very few descriptive words in a light font that entices the user to tap one of list in recommendations and see this offering in more detail. Driven by curiosity and because the app uses elements of discovery, the user taps one of the tiles and the offered good with a larger copy description and price takes over the screen as the other 3 tiles tumble away as if guided off ‘camera’ by a smooth wind. 
- User can see who has uploaded the photo, can mark the items that have similar interactions to a FB "Like"
- User can tap into the item to reveal the item details

06. Product Details Screen
- Content for this screen will be a larger copy of product description and it's price. 
- There should be some navigation for user to go to the next screen / Offering Screen. 
- The user then can examine the curated offer and do one of 3 things:

Buy it (tap screen to begin purchase process)

Bin it (swipe right to add to user’s personal “Style bin”)

Bury it (by swiping left the user expresses he isn’t interested in this item)

07: Presentation Screen!
- We need to quickly take your designs and show it to the audience tomorrow morning!
- If you need to - spend more time on your presentation screen as its the first thing we will show the audience!
- See attachments of great presentation screens!

Design Considerations 
- Focus on the design being a great mobile experience - the application should be designed for iPhone
- DO NOT copy the wireframes (if you do.. everyone's designs will look the same!) focus on creating your unique approach to this project and the user experience
- Give importance to the overall layout and think on how a user would interact with the content on the page.

Audience
- Challenge Audience: Think about how you would present your design - its key to showcasing your ideas

Judging Criteria
- How well you design the mobile application concept!
- Cleanliness of your graphics and design.
- Design and User Experience.

Submission & Source Files
Preview Image
Create your preview image as one (1) 1024x1024 JPG or PNG file in RGB color mode at 72dpi and place a screenshot of your submission within it.

Submission File
Please upload PNG images in a zip file with all requested contest requirements stated above. Number your files (01, 02, 03, etc) this will help review them in order.

Source Files
All original source files of the submitted design. Files should be created in Adobe Photoshop or Illustrator and saved as layered PSD/AI files. 

Final Fixes
We most likely will not have Final Fixes - Have fun!!