Environmental Impact Study
About Company Stylecard is a technology startup focused on delivering personalized search experiences to consumers in the apparel and fashion space through an interactive, proprietary, and unique user experience. We believe that each individual has ideal fit and style preferences and the best person to identify, control, and set those preferences is the individual. We’ve developed tools and an experience for the user that brings this all to life. Project Scope Project Description: Stylecard provides people with a personalized shopping experience. If shoppers are able to find exactly the garment they want with Stylecard, this could decrease returns, decrease garments purchased, increase average lifespan of garment, maximize sale of in-stock garments, and optimize manufacturing to prevent overproduction of garments. This project will determine the environmental impact of the pipeline from apparel production to consumer to physical waste and identify how mass adoption of Stylecard might change this impact. We expect this project to build an understanding of apparel industry fundamentals like traditional manufacturing, just-in-time manufacturing, manufacturer-to-brand shipping, pre-sale disposal of garments (by brands), brand-to-customer shipping and returns, and post-sale disposal of garments (by customers). At each stage in the pipeline we would like to categorize carbon dioxide and greenhouse gas pollution, freshwater use and water pollution (dyes, plastics, etc.), and physical waste (pre-consumer, post-consumer, inefficient production and over production). By the end of the project, we would like a product that speaks to the environmental impact currently, and the change in environmental impact given the mass adoption of Stylecard. The primary Stylecard point of contact is the CIO. Regular communication with the entire executive team is expected. Project Details: Students will scope which sections of the apparel pipeline they can study in the time frame for the course. Within each section, students will quantify impact in the three categories listed above, i.e., greenhouse gases, water, and physical waste. Given the obscurity of details in the apparel industry, we expect this quantification to include ranges and/or error bars, and that the methodology for quantifying impact in each category. Once a baseline quantification has been determined, students will build models of potential impact Stylecard could have on each of these categories at each section of pipeline in the scope. Because Stylecard is not yet adopted in masse, we expect these models to have variable impact depending on factors such as return rate, conversion rate, and percentage of purchases made with Stylecard. Project Goals/Deliverables Identify sections of the apparel pipeline with enough open source data to reasonably quantify environmental impact. Provide methodology for quantifying environmental impact of apparel industry on greenhouse gases, water, and physical waste. Provide estimations of environmental impact impact of apparel industry on greenhouse gases, water, and physical waste. Provide methodology for quantifying environmental impact of Stylecard on greenhouse gases, water, and physical waste. Provide a model (excel sheet, python notebook, or similar) representing how Stylecard's impact changes with respect to decreased return rates and increased conversion rates. Provide a written summary of findings from the goals above.
Apparel E-commerce Technology - Market Competition Research
Positions available: one individual student Stylecard is a technology startup focused on delivering personalized search experiences to consumers shopping for clothing through an interactive, proprietary, and unique user experience. The market for apparel ecommerce is a rapidly changing one. The Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated some market trends and has also caused a retraction of the overall market size. Even with the decline in market size, online shopping for clothing vs. in-store is expected to rebound and get back to steady annual growth rates as more and more shopping for clothing transitions online. However, a huge problem persists: returns. On average, 30% of clothing purchased online is returned, and during the holiday's that number reaches as high as 40%. Many technology companies have sprung up to try to help brands solve this problem. In fact, startups have been trying to solve this problem for nearly a decade. All with different approaches depending on when they've timed their go to market and the technology and data available at that time. It seems, though, that very few (if any) solutions have actually been able to make any material impact in this negative trend that continues to plague the industry. Stylecard's proposes its own solution that is consumer-centric and accounts for consumer psychology specific to clothing fit and style preference. We have a strong vision and focus on our product based on consumer feedback, we just need a little bit of help understanding the competition around us. Due to our focus on the consumer, we're not very competition focused and have realized we need to clear up this blind spot as we move forward with our institutional fundraising efforts. We are seeking a market research intern that can help create a visual diagram of the market and where Stylecard fits in amongst the competition. Our goal is to show that we stand a part from the pack, given our consumer-focus, product roadmap, and feature set.
Body Positivity in Fashion Tech
About Company Stylecard is a technology startup focused on delivering personalized search experiences to consumers in the apparel and fashion space through an interactive, proprietary, and unique user experience. We believe that everyone has ideal fit and style preferences and the best person to identify, control, and set those preferences is the individual. We’ve developed tools and an experience for the user that brings this all to life. Project Scope Project Description: Stylecard is a technology startup focused on delivering personalized search experiences to consumers in the apparel and fashion space through an interactive, proprietary, and unique user experience. To do this, we will determine user measurements from user provided photos. We recognize that interactions with our tools provide opportunities to support positive body image for our users. This project will identify best practices or leading practices presented in research literature to reinforce positive body image for our users. Additionally, this project will identify messaging to avoid. The primary Stylecard point of contact is the CIO, and regular communication with the entire executive team is expected. Project Details: The project is expected to produce literature reviews from relevant scientific sources and contact researchers were necessary or feasible. All recommendations and insights should be provided with Stylecard’s context in mind; recommendations should align with our current tools and interface and be adaptable enough to use as the interface and tools grow. Project Goals/Deliverables 1. Identify research backed messaging and that supports positive body image. 2. Identify locations in the user experience best positioned to promote this messaging. 3. Identify specific processes to avoid in our user experience with body positivity in mind. 4. Provide a written summary of methodology and findings from the first three goals.
Business to Business Partnership Journey
About Company Stylecard is a technology startup focused on delivering personalized search experiences to consumers in the apparel and fashion space through an interactive, proprietary, and unique user experience. We believe that each individual has ideal fit and style preferences and the best person to identify, control, and set those preferences is the individual. We’ve developed tools and an experience for the user that brings this all to life. Project Scope Project Description: Stylecard is a technology startup focused on delivering personalized search experiences to consumers in the apparel and fashion space through an interactive, proprietary, and unique user experience. To accomplish this, we will partner with individual brands to detail specifics about their garments’ measurements and intended styling. This project will optimize a strategy, timeline, and order to brand acquisition, recognizing that more brand partnerships and a higher volume of products and styles will bring more users, in turn attracting more brand partnerships. The primary Stylecard point of contact is the CIO. Regular communication with the entire executive team is expected. Project Details: Students will develop a plan to optimize the rate of increase of brand partnerships and total number of styles included in our search capability. This will entail identifying which brands to partner with first, in accordance with their ability to drive other brands to engage with us. Analysis should include both activewear and apparel industries. The plan should include a pricing strategy sufficient to meet the Stylecard’s cost of hosting brand garment data and serving content. The plan may be split between multiple stages to ensure scalability during Stylecard’s growth. Project Goals/Deliverables 1. Identify tiered pricing model for brand partnerships that encourages early partnerships without deterring smaller brands from partnering. 2. Identify optimal premium pricing model for brands. 3. Identify optimal brand acquisition early adopters and scale up approach. 4. Provide a written summary of methodology and findings from the first three goals.
Emerging Technology Software Engineering Project
Project Description: Stylecard is a technology startup focused on delivering personalized search experiences to consumers shopping for clothing through an interactive, proprietary, and unique user experience. The company recently redesigned the app's UX after our first successful pilot test. We are seeking a talented and motivated team of developers to help bring new features and functionality to our application. This project will introduce you to some complex back-end and front-end requirements including computer vision, machine learning, web scraping, hardware gyroscopic integrations, and custom camera development. All work will be expected to be in collaboration with the company's technology group and report directly to the CTO. Project Details: Develop a program for capturing and understanding volumetric human data. Students will build on existing research to create a real-time capture system for use in an anthropometric computing system. The ideal system will be mobile-friendly leveraging cloud services, as needed. The end result is visualization of a digital human with precise body measurements. Students will be exposed to a full software development lifecycle, solving a complex program, and integrating with existing services. Project Goals/Deliverables 1. Completion of volumetric human body capture application. 2. Extraction of anthropometric data from capture data. 3. Visualization of captured data.
Intelligent Web Software Engineering Project
Project Description: Stylecard is a technology startup focused on delivering personalized search experiences to consumers shopping for clothing through an interactive, proprietary, and unique user experience. The company recently redesigned the app's UX after our first successful pilot test. We are seeking a talented and motivated team of developers to help bring new features and functionality to our application. This project will introduce you to some complex back-end and front-end requirements including computer vision, machine learning, web scraping, hardware gyroscopic integrations, and custom camera development. All work will be expected to be in collaboration with the company's technology group and report directly to the CTO. Project Details: Develop a clothing size chart web scraper. This data scraping program should be able to identify the size chart on a clothing brand's website, read and understand the data, and pull the data into a dedicated database so that our search matching service can appropriately score recommendations. Students will be exposed to a full software development lifecycle, solving a complex program, and integrating with existing services. Project Goals/Deliverables 1. Completion of configuration-based data scraping service. 2. Saving of scraped data to a yet-to-be defined databased schema. 3. Integration of discovered data for use in back-end services.
Computer Vision Software Engineering Project
Project Description: Stylecard is a technology startup focused on delivering personalized search experiences to consumers shopping for clothing through an interactive, proprietary, and unique user experience. The company recently redesigned the app's UX after our first successful pilot test. We are seeking a talented and motivated team of developers to help bring new features and functionality to our application. This project will introduce you to complex back-end and front-end requirements including computer vision, machine learning, hardware integrations, and custom camera development. All work will be expected to be in collaboration with the company's technology group and report directly to the CTO. Key Learnings will be how to design and develop a consumer application with complex business logic that delivers an enjoyable user experience. Project Details: Develop an image processing pipeline addressing front-end user experience requirements for a computer vision based application. We will ask the student team to develop a custom in-app camera feature with integration of smartphone sensors. The in-app camera experience will utilize a phone's sensors in conjunction with existing computer vision libraries to enforce image capture quality, as is required by our backend services. This process will help to ensure that photo's taken will have the best measurement data possible when processed through our existing body measurement service. Students will be exposed to a full software development lifecycle, solving a complex program, and integrating with existing services. Project Goals/Deliverables 1. Completion of an in-app camera utility that aligns to design specifications. 2. Development of an image processing pipeline that aggregates feedback from real-time sensor data and outputs of computer vision services. The goal is for students to leverage gyroscope and/or accelerometer data for consistent and level photo's of humans then to process the photo's with human and pose detection. Providing a process that results in photo's that are compliant with our backend Body Measurement service requirements. 3. OPTIONAL: Integration with a backend web service.
Marketing Communications Project
In our efforts to target a new demographic of consumers, we have experienced challenges maintaining a consistent voice across media channels. We want you to assist us in updating our branding in a way that clearly differentiates us from our competitors and serves our target market. For this project, you will need to: Understand our brand and mission. Conduct research on our users, stakeholders, and competitors. Analyze our competitive landscape. Identify trends and opportunities in our target market. You will have access to our marketing team, who will communicate regularly with you and provide all the information and clarification needed. We want to increase our brand awareness in the market segment through a mission-aligned marketing campaign that works within our budget and time constraints.
Ambitious front-end development team for Stylecard app redesign build
Project Description: The Sizing Company is a technology startup focused on delivering personalized search experiences to consumers in the apparel and fashion space through an interactive, proprietary, and unique user experience. The company recently redesigned the app's UX after our first successful pilot test. We are seeking a talented and motivated front-end developer to help bring our new app screen designs to life. This project will introduce you to some complex back-end and front-end requirements including computer vision, machine learning, hardware gyroscopic integrations, and custom camera development. All work will be expected to be in collaboration with the company's technology group and report directly to the CTO. You will be expected to attend a weekly meeting with the technology group to discuss progress, challenges/opportunities, solutions, new ideas, and hear from other members of the team. Project Details: 1. Develop custom camera feature that is native to the app, to our UX design specs, and with integration to smartphone's native sensors. 2. Develop primary onboarding screens to our UX design specs. 3. Ensure, in collaboration with CTO, proper front-end/back-end integrations and data flow. 4. Develop primary "user account" screens to our UX design specs. 5. Primary screens are expected to be built in HTML/CSS and the custom camera is expected to be built in Javascript. Project Goals/Deliverables 1. Completion of custom camera feature as described above. 2. Completion of all primary onboarding screens as descried above. 3. Completion of all primary "user account" screens as described above.