Wve Experience

Inspiration

We were inspired by a lack of awareness of hidden disabilities in store. 80% of disabilities are hidden and we want to make sure people with these kinds of disabilities get the accommodations they need while shopping, making the in-person shopping experience accessible to everyone.

We found that there is already some working being done to help people communicate their hidden disabilities like the Hidden Disabilities Sunflowers and the New York Disability Identification Cards, however these solutions are low tech and rely on awareness of the solution.

We wanted to create a communication solution that was technically savvy and both enabled and improved the beauty shopping experience while engaging with the beauty industry. While hidden disabilities and beauty shopping were our inspiration, we’ve expanded Wve to address the current NFC market and aimed to make it customizable and general enough for anyone to use.

What it does

The Wve System consists of two Apps and WveAbles: NFC enabled press-on nails, cards, and maybe more!

The Wve+ app allows users to create “ShareAbles” and order and configure “WveAbles”. ShareAbles are digital introduction cards, business cards, and shopping profiles. WveAbles are the NFC enabled products users can order. We provide press on nails, physical cards, and the encoded nfc chip itself (to allow for user customizability). The Wve+ app will also identify your WveAbles once you’ve ordered them.

The WveStore app is an in-store solution used by store employees to receive and add to users’ Wve shopping profiles.

Challenges we ran into

Scope was our primary challenge in this project. We knew that this technology had applications to improve the lives of people with disabilities, but it would be impossible to have an application that could address every problem. Narrowing the focus of our application was difficult, but we believe it led us to create a more comprehensive product. We focused on finding a solution that fit the consumer’s needs and the market, while being technically feasible.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud of freedom that Wve can provide users. Wve can entirely change the day-to-day experience of a customer who previously had to explain their accommodations. This, we hope, will ease the problem of communication in our consumer’s everyday life. We believe that Wve is also incredibly flexible and can help people across a wide range of disabilities by being a general solution to a communication problem.

We are also excited to be engaging with the growing omni channel shopping experience and hope that solutions like Wve will help enable the future of retail to not only be more personalized but more accessible as well.

What we learned

During our research, we found ourselves turning to first person experiences from people with disabilities- commonly beauty influencers. Our goal was to identify the most common problems that people with disabilities faced, and while listening to these stories we were able to see a small fraction of their lives and how their disability impacted that area. As a team comprised of able-bodied people, this was an incredibly eye-opening endeavor.

What's next for Wve Experience

Next up for Wve is building out the Wve+ app and solutioning WveAbles production. After releasing a basic version of Wve+, we’d like to focus on integrated shopping with WveShop and find a brand to pilot this integration.

Built With

• figma
• powerpoint