Loopyloop
A Centralized Marketplace and Toolkit for Fiber Artists
ROLES
Ideation
Contextual research
Design
COLLABORATORS
(3 Designers)
Affan Ashraf, Kareena Patel
& Mustafa Arshad
CONTEXT
I'm an avid crocheter, and I'd watch friends give up before they even started.
The onboarding into crafting is rough, with multiple platforms, no clear starting point, and the gap between finding inspiration and knowing what to buy is wider than it should be.
I pitched LoopyLoop to my classmates as a fix: a centralized hub where crafters could buy, sell, and go from inspiration to a ready-to-go materials list without the friction in between.
PROBLEM
No single platform takes a crafter from inspiration, to materials, to making.
Etsy handles finished goods. Retailers handle supplies.
Pinterest handles inspiration, but stops there. The result is constant context-switching, and momentum lost before a project begins.
IN THE FIELD
We visited JOANN and Michaels to check if the fragmentation was actually frustrating, or just part of the process.
Shoppers wandered the aisles, holding their phones up, struggling to match a photo to the real materials. Interviews with employees revealed that they often filled the gap as impromptu consultants. But, not all had the craft knowledge to help, and stores rarely stocked exactly what customers were looking for.
WORKSHOP
We ran a participatory workshop with a simple probe - here's a sweater, show us how you'd make it.
Our store visits and interviews had already confirmed that the frustration was real, but they couldn't tell us exactly where in the process people got stuck. The workshop helped us better understand the journey.
1) One participant got stuck at step one, describing just how specific her material searches really are.
2) Another mapped the whole process but had no way to document or sell it.
The rest of this case study will highlight the two pain points (listed above) that informed loopyloop's core features.
SOLUTIONS
We designed two tools to address both ends of the problem.
The Material Identifier
Material Identifier lets users upload an inspiration photo, enter project specs, and get a materials list with direct purchase links (both, on the platform and as a browser extension).
The Pattern Writing Tool
The Pattern Writing Tool uses a slash-command menu to insert complex stitch terms in a single click.
ITERATIONS
Getting to the designs above took several rounds of think-aloud testing.
Nowhere to save results:
Testers loved the Material Identifier but had no way to hold onto what it generated.
The fix: We added a Download CSV option to the extension.
A blank page problem:
The Pattern Writer left people unsure where to start.
The fix: A Help toggle and clearer onboarding made the shortcuts intuitive from the first use.
REFLECTIONS
Balancing utility vs. delight
Being a crocheter helped, as I could pitch this problem clearly. But that meant it would have been easy to skip checking whether the frustration around finding materials was real and widespread, or just mine. Participatory workshops involving other crafters were essential before we designed anything. We always led with automating the frustrating bits, never the joy of making.
If I revisited this today…
I wouldn't build from scratch. I'd modernize a legacy platform like Ravelry, because the patterns, the data, and the community's goodwill already live there. Watching JOANN close right after we wrapped only made this feel more urgent: the spaces that support making things by hand are shrinking, and design has a role in protecting the ones left.