HYPEBEAST is a digital media and e-commerce company focusing on contemporary fashion and streetwear. During my time as an Editorial Intern at HYPEBEAST, I was tasked with improving the interface of the HypeDB website.

Editorial Intern, UI/UX Design

3 Months

HypeDB is a pilot database project that highlights and showcases the brands and people within the fashion and streetwear industry.

My first objective was to redesign the homepage of the database project. Through talking to various stakeholders attached to the project, I was able to gain a better understanding of the product requirements and the issues with the then-current homepage.

We recognized that most database users already have something specific to search for when they first visit the homepage of the database; therefore, we needed to further emphasize the search bar as the visual information above the search bar was too overwhelming. In addition, the Trending widget needed to be placed higher in the information architecture of the HypeDB homepage as stakeholders wanted to highlight the Treading feature. Lastly, we needed a workaround for the Google News API issue as the API was not generating optimal images for our News widget.

In the first major redesign, the Trending widget was expanded and stretched so that it would fill the entire width of the page. Since the widget is situated directly beneath the search bar, this change fulfilled the objective of moving the feature higher in the homepage IA.

In order to preserve and maintain the same amount of visual information from the first design, profile images were added to the entries in the Trending list. Circular icons were also introduced to provide basic information about each entry in the list.

In the second iteration, a banner image is placed behind the search bar to create a sense of fluidity between the navigation toolbar and the search bar.

The problem of image generation in the News widget still remained after the first iteration as the API was returning images that did not fit our horizontal container. To counter this issue, the article images were removed entirely from the News feature. Instead, a profile image was added beneath the text preview of each headline. This design change achieved two things: it prevented the issue of displaying sub-optimal images, and gave our users a better sense of how the trending new articles related to the entries in our database.

In addition to redesigning the homepage, I was asked to introduce various features to the content pages as well.

The purpose of introducing additional features in the content pages is to not only generate traffic within the database, but to provide opportunities for users to explore other HYPEBEAST offerings.

The addition of the image gallery allowed users to explore the various collections and look-books published by the brand, while the Shop This feature gave users the option to browse the brands products without needing to open a new tab or window. In addition, the The Shop This feature drove traffic to HYPEBEAST’s online store, HBX, as the widget is directly connected to HBX.