Fast fashion today is second to oil as the world’s largest polluter, meaning that people are buying twice as much clothing but wearing it half as long, disposing of it at an unprecedented rate. We focused on this design space to come up with a more sustainable way of clothing, without doing away with people's desires of trendy clothes.
Aditi Saldanha
Isaiah Hudson
Parumita Sachdeva
Yunyu Zhou
Sketch
Adobe Premiere Pro
User Research
Ideation
User Interface
Prototyping
4 months
(Aug 2019 - Nov 2019)
Our team strives to improve sustainability in fashion. We want to do so in a way that is desirable, feasible, and viable.
We can encourage a redirective practice by influencing behaviors and attitudes. Moreover, we can promote awareness about the true cost of fast fashion.
We know that people like to keep up with the trends and also want value for money. Moreover, new clothes are preferred to second hand clothes and although many people donate, it still doesn't solve the issue.
Based on our experiences, we decided to list out our current assumptions and conduct research to validate them.
People buy clothes impulsively for emotional support (breakups, losing weight, etc.)
People buy clothes because they are promoted by fashion bloggers and influencers.
Donation centers aren’t inviting or appealing and people lack incentives to donate.
Second hand clothing isn’t desirable because they have smell, stains or aren’t in great shape.
Some people prefer second hand clothes to express themselves creatively.
There is an imbalance of demand and supply in second hand clothing. We deduced that the lack of donation was never the problem, but the fact that there was an excess of donations - more than what people demanded.
We can’t stop or influence the companies that produce fast fashion. However, we can influence consumers’ mindsets and demands and in turn reduce the production of fast fashion.
Upcycling and recycling are ways people can adapt a more sustainable way of fashion. However, these processes just delay the cycle as these clothes ultimately also end up in landfill. Furthermore, recycling still produces a lot of chemicals and pollution.
For this exercise, we conducted a series of crazy concept sketches. As a group, we sketched over 40 concepts, many of them were extremely crazy but we kept aside the feasibility to enable our creative juices to flow. From these, we chose 5 to further develop and illustrate.
We decided to go ahead with a shirt that allows people to digitally change the designs on their t-shirt with just one click. Users have access to thousands of designs and unlimited colors and can change their outfit whenever they feel like it by using the app.
We created paper prototypes to test our idea and see how users feel about the concept. As people chose options in the paper-phone app, we changed the shirt design by replacing the images stuck on the shirt. It was a basic but helpful way to get reactions.
“It’s different. I’ve never seen anything like this. It’s efficient.”
“It’s so fun. I see a lot of potential”
“I love the concept. I love its versatile use, optimization of closet space, and storage of styles forever.”
Different colours and clothing shapes
Different positions of design
Preview graphics on shirts on the app
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Users can browse through thousands of designs on the app. Available designs feature pop culture, sports teams, iconic logos, and much more.
People can choose from unlimited colors and choose the placement of the graphic. They can either try on the design for a limited amount of time or choose to purchase it. Once purchased, the design will be added to users’ virtual closet on the app.
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To test our concept, we used Figma Mirror to allow users to interact with our app and a projector to project designs as users select designs from the app. People liked the idea but had apprehensions about the cleaning of this kind of a shirt which made us think about the technologies to do so.
Silver demonstrated the future of jerseys: a piece of smart clothing that can change the name andnumber displayed on them through a mobile app. Details on how the jersey is made weren’t shared,but it’s a neat, concept and something we haven’t seen before.
Each thread woven into Chromorphous’ fabric incorporates within it a thin metal micro-wire.An electric current flows through the micro-wires, slightly raising the thread’s temperature. Specialpigments embedded in the thread then respond to this change of temperature by changing its colour.
We also formulated our two years long strategy if this product was to be launched in the market. We decided to start out with higher price with limited product and ultimately diverge into multiple products as economies of scale occur and cost goes down.
Since this was my first project that I worked on in the industry and it was supposed to be done from scratch, I learned a lot of things about the Design process. I am extremely grateful for working on this project since it taught me so many different challenges that arise which I did not even know about previously.
I learned the value of research and how it can influence designs. I realised, I should have conducted more in-person interviews and surveys may not be a very accurate measure of getting insights.
I also struggled in coordinating with the tech team and understand the technical feasibilities of the project. An MVP had to be made quickly and design decisions had to be made accordingly. But at the same time, it was important for me to make sure that I could communicate the technical aspects with the engineers.
Last, but certainly not least, it is an extremely important skill to communicate with the Clients and to be able to take into account what they want but at the same time convince them of things which may not work as they imagine it. There are times where there has to be a trade-off between what the client wants and what I as a designer want and it is important to make those decisions mindfully.
