#9 Rethinking, rephrasing and getting closer

Having my master thesis in mind, I started to overthink my topic and the research I conducted throughout the last two semesters.

First, I went back to the beginning and asked myself again how a virtual fitting room could be included on a website to improve the shopping experience online. For this approach, I envisioned a virtual fitting room for swimwear and finally turned down the idea. I then focused on size guiding in swimwear and looked into existing online swimwear stores for women to compare their brand stories and business models. I compared their size guides, fabrication methods, sustainability, collections, designs, and supply. Many of those websites confused me a lot. I had the feeling of not quite understanding the brand’s values and story. I instantly thought about Miller’s quote (“you confuse, you lose”) and was thinking he is damn right, I would never order a bikini from this online store. This was a key moment for me because I finally found a way to combine branding/storytelling and interaction design. I took a step back from founding a sustainable brand with an immersive shopping experience and a step towards telling a story of a sustainable brand virtually. In my further research, I would like to focus on brand storytelling on websites and online stores. In addition, it would be interesting to even create a prototype website for a fictional brand (if I would have to choose now, I would build an online shop for women’s swimwear). The focus should be on connecting visitors of the website with the company’s story and values.

For my master thesis I can imagine to:

– dive deep into the theory of storytelling for a company

– find various methods to tell a brand story virtually

– create a universal framework on how to include a brand’s story into their web design

– designing a website/ an online store for a fictional company as a storytelling example

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