Mr. Sneaker Head ( My Summer project)

[ Deleted ]

[ Deleted ]

[ Deleted ]

Hey Keno,

Looks like an interesting challenge to work through all the Shapeways API stuff! I remember looking into it a year ago and it was pretty daunting, so congrats on executing a fully working site. So now that it’s set up, is it completely hands-off on your side when someone places an order, ie. goes straight to Shapeways for payment and fulfillment? Pretty cool, I might have to hit you up with some questions later on this.

In terms of design related feedback, I’m assuming that you’re hoping to sell these and this isn’t just an academic exercise so here’s my thoughts on where you could improve for future iterations and potentially get more sales:

The site still feels pretty unrefined. The main illustration feels flat, having all one line weight is probably the main problem. Also it’s kind of strange that you’ve left out many interior edges, so it feels like a basic outline for a paper cut out.

There are a lot of examples of great customization examples to look at for reference/benchmark for usability. The fact that you have pick colors by selecting an unnamed circle that doesn’t relate to the shoe component is really confusing. Ideally clicking on the shoe component and having the color wheel pop up would be the most intuitive way to pick (I would think). I understand that there’s probably significant coding involved and this is the first pass, but at the bare minimum there could be a simple label on each color (vamp, eyerow, toebox, etc).

In terms of ID related feedback, might be good to share a little more process outside of the technical challenges.Who do you envision as your customer. You mentioned starting with the idea of doing a vinyl sneaker toy, which would make me think your potential consumer is the teen/adult sneakerhead collector type? Your current shoe design is super basic and juvenile toy like, which makes me think you’re appealing to very young children, or their parents.

[ Deleted ]

Definitely sounds like it was a worthwhile process to go through in terms of ironing out the technical challenges. Now the hard part: finding a subject matter that connects to consumers :smiley:

The core premise of the project has legs. There are tons of great examples of sneaker related art/collectibles that I come across on the daily. I would guess the lack of traction relates to your design. 99.9999% of sneaker art/collectibles are based off existing models. To convince a sneaker head or anyone to buy a collectible based on a non-existing model is a tall order. On the flip side creating another Air Max homage might not be the sort of challenge that excites you, in which case might make more sense to roll the learnings into a new subject matter.

[ Deleted ]