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Overview

This is a design concept to tackle the environmental and ethical impacts of fashion.

What’s the problem?

• The low prices of fashion items encourages more impulse purchase which produces more waste in the environment.

• Consumer education and awareness is growing, but still slow.

• How can we help people to shop more consciously and raise awareness of fashion’s environmental impact?

What was the outcome?

• A mobile application concept to track what’s in a user’s current wardrobe.

• The goal is to help consumers make better purchase decisions in the future through reflection and education.

Discovery & Research

The world now consumes a staggering 80 billion pieces of clothing each year. This is up 400% from two decades ago. Only 10% of the clothes people donate to charity or thrift stores get sold.

The rest end up in landfills or flooding markets in developing countries like Haiti where they are bought by the box and kill the local industry. (Source: The True Cost)

My first step was to begin with research and delve deeper in the topic to identify user needs.

What i wanted to know:

• To what extent do consumers consider the environmental and ethical impact of their clothing purchases aka. do people care?

• What are the factors that influence decision making during clothing purchase?

• How consumers currently gather information about the sustainable and ethical practices of clothing brands.

i targeted 2 main consumer groups:

1. Consumers who are not aware of what they’re buying and the impact it has on the environment. They buy with the intention of accessing a new fashion item cheaply.

2. Conscious consumers who care about how and where their clothes are made but find it difficult to find out if a brand is ethical or sustainable.

Research Methods

1. Survey: to determine influencing factors when purchasing clothing.

2. Interviews: to find out in detail the purchase behaviour and process of the consumer.

Synthesizing Research and Findings

Survey FINDINGS (samples size:25)

• Awareness and education is the biggest issue.

• The ethical and sustainable impacts of purchasing clothes is the least important aspect in their decision process.

• When people do want to find out more, it often requires hours of research to find the right information about a brand.

• They don’t buy a lot of clothes, they like sales.

• Quality and price are important to them.

Interview Findings

• Consumers don’t tend to think about the environmental impact of clothing purchases

• Consumers prefer to save money and purchases clothing during sales

• Value is very important when purchasing clothing. Does the price and quality match?

• Receiving email newsletters is often a trigger to spontaneous clothing purchase

Target Audience

Females who purchase clothing and like to save money and buy less.

• They have minimal knowledge on the environmental impact of fashion.

• This group focuses more on financial goals rather than sustainable goals.

User Goals:

• Buy less clothes

• Declutter and simplify wardrobe

• Save money on clothing

• Buy good quality clothing

• Know the material source of the clothing

Customer Persona:

Redefining the Problem

I found out that environmental impact and sustainability is not an influencing factor to purchasing clothing for most consumers.

Problem statement

Michelle needs a way to track what’s in her current wardrobe and her future clothing purchases because she wants to save money by buying less items but better quality clothing.

Hypothesis

We believe that by tracking what’s in her current wardrobe and any new items she purchases, she will save money and reduce clothing wastage.

Ideating the Solution

User CentRed Design Canvas (By The Rectangles)

Before sketching solutions, I decided to use the UCDC to help me capture all the important findings and information on one page.

Initial Solution Sketches for Mobile Application

How might a mobile application help Michelle track the items in her wardrobe and educate her about the environmental aspects of her clothing purchases?

Developing an MVP using:

• Feature prioritisation list

• Two-by-two matrix (Impact/Expectation)

Mobile Application Sketches:

Wireframes & User Flow

The concept: Conscious Closet

1. A mobile application that lets users log and track their items in the closet.

2. The application synthesises brand and fabric information to educate the user on the environmental impact of their wardrobe through a simple rating.

Initial testing

Results from testing:

Before:

1. The dashboard hierarchy was a weakness in the first wireframe.

2. In the ‘My closet’ screen, users made a note that there is no motive to click into the item more than once because there would be no new information shown after the first time they log the item.

After:

1. I introduced a two column grid to show ‘total items’ and ‘total spend’ on one line. This saved space and allowed me to push ‘Environmental impact’ up so that it is more prominent when the user opens the app and lands on the dashboard.

2. I introduced a ‘cost per wear’ function so users can log how many times they’ve worn an item. This provides another level of analysis of a user’s wardrobe which encourages the user to return to the item screen whenever they wear the item again.

High Fidelity Prototype

Learnings

This is a concept that needs validation for feasability with the tech team. A discussion needs to be had on how can we integrate available data about the brands and material to auto-generate a report on the ‘items’ page.

My next steps would involve more testing and user interviews to improve the usability and experience of the application.

Future features:

• A search function that allows users to research a brand before they purchase.

• Bulk add function so new users can easily add multiple items in their wardrobe at a time to shorten upload time.

• Customer reviews of the brand and item

• Factory and labour insights.

• Show alternate brands or fabrics that are more environmentally friendly.

• Education and resource function that can help users make more informed choices the next time they purchase clothing.

• Outfit or capsule wardrobe building function.