As Principal UX Designer

My company had released iLikeit, a fashion social network for the Japanese market. A company in Tokyo saw the app, liked the concept and hired us to launch another version the app under their brand, Marono.

Design and project manage the development of a a bilingual app targeted to the Japanese and European markets. Social networks were hot at the time, so we were being asked to research and design new ways to succeed with this segment of users.

Research: Looked at what fashion followers most liked about the Japanese market, and the European markets. Japanese are more shy, wanted to follow, and share less publicly. They wanted to follow brands, get ahead of trends, find new brands before they become famous, and purchase goods before they went mainstream. There was equal interest in Japanese and European brands.

Discovery: The up and coming Japanese fashion brands were not getting enough exposure in Europe. This led to the possibility of a bilingual fashion news service, loved by Japanese to connect with a world witde audience.

Marono pivoted to leverage the full opportunity and launched the most successful news feed application for Japanese fashion brands into the Japanese and European markets at the time.