About the project
The fashion industry is the second largest polluter in the world. A large contributor that many people buy into is fast fashion. We found that college students often participate in fast fashion due to practicality and lack of knowledge on the negative impacts.
To raise awareness and encourage sustainable habits, we created a chrome extension that rates clothing brands based on their sustainable and ethical practices. We also provide alternatives and more in-depth information on our ratings.
To raise awareness and encourage sustainable habits, we created a chrome extension that rates clothing brands based on their sustainable and ethical practices. We also provide alternatives and more in-depth information on our ratings.
Phase 1: Understand
Design Question
How might college-aged individuals achieve making sustainable clothing choices so that they can positively impact the environment and ultimately change their clothing habits?
Through our project, we hope to shed light on the source of the clothing that people own and how that can affect both the environment and the workers that produce them. We hope that this will encourage our users to consider more sustainable and ethical clothing options going forward.
Market Research
To get a sense of what has already been done in this space, we conducted market research.
We looked at about 20 different products and services and identified what is relevant, what we liked as well as our overall insights from exploring the different products. Below is a summary of our insights:
We looked at about 20 different products and services and identified what is relevant, what we liked as well as our overall insights from exploring the different products. Below is a summary of our insights:
- Not many applications or websites that endorse sustainable and ethical brands
- Some applications that encourage minimizing wardrobe
- Most applications tackle either ethical shopping or decluttering but not both
- Variety of applications that indirectly encourage shopping sustainably
Studying brands not even directly in the sustainability or clothing space will help us with any inspiration we need in design or even any features that our audience finds user friendly. Our team saw a lot of the poor design features of many products which informed us more on why sustainability is not the easiest space to dive into. However, we were inspired by the ways certain products had a simple and informational design that we wanted to emulate.
User Research
Once we finished our market research, we then conducted user interviews and sent out surveys to get a better sense of college students’ relationship with sustainable fashion practices.
In total, we conducted twelve semi-structured interviews and about twenty anonymous surveys of University of Washington students. Below is a summary of our insights:
In total, we conducted twelve semi-structured interviews and about twenty anonymous surveys of University of Washington students. Below is a summary of our insights:
- Many college students are growing in consciousness for sustainability in clothing and are interested in learning more
- It’s hard to find sustainable brands, generally, especially lower cost ones
- Many college students have an excess of clothes
- There is a lack of trust for companies when talking about their practices
This resource has helped us better understand important tools that users might need to create more sustainable purchasing practices. Learning that users struggle to create sustainable wardrobes because of convenience, allows us to focus on making a seamless process that could make them more inclined to do so.
Also learning about major pain points in making sustainable clothing purchases, makes us more aware of possible pitfalls to work around in our app. For instance, knowing that users sometimes fail to make sustainable purchases because of a lack of knowledge on alternatives, inspires us to make recommendations as a considerable feature for our app
Also learning about major pain points in making sustainable clothing purchases, makes us more aware of possible pitfalls to work around in our app. For instance, knowing that users sometimes fail to make sustainable purchases because of a lack of knowledge on alternatives, inspires us to make recommendations as a considerable feature for our app
Affinity Mapping
I synthesized and extracted meaningful information, trends, and patterns from the research through affinity diagramming. This information helps to identify specific pain points and desires users have with the feature.
Learning about major pain points in making sustainable clothing purchases, makes us more aware of possible pitfalls to work around in our app. For instance, knowing that users sometimes fail to make sustainable purchases because of a lack of knowledge on alternatives, inspires us to make a recommendation box in our app.
User Personas
From this user research, we created two personas of two types of users that may potentially use our plugin:
User Journey Mapping
I then created a journey map to better understand our primary persona's purchasing habits and the thoughts and emotions associated with the different phases of completing their goal.
Phase 02: Ideate
Design Goals
While keeping our research in mind, we created a set of goals that would allow us to explore and generate a broad pool of ideas that would lead us to a solution.
- Create a tool that informs users about how sustainable the company they are viewing is
- Create a central hub connected to the tool where users can research about companies
Core Responsibilities
- Design web platform and plugin UI screens to release to the market and compete with competitors.
- Establish platform identity through lo-fi and hi-fidelity deliverables such as storyboards, wireframes, style guide and UI design.
Idea Prioritization
We conducted a cardstorm in order to generate as many ideas as possible. We then prioritized these through a prioritization matrix then by ranking our ideas "must-have", "should-have", and "nice-to-have”.
Below is a snapshot of our prioritization matrix. Our goal was to identify what features would have the greatest value for our audience while considering developmental and timeline constraints.
Below is a snapshot of our prioritization matrix. Our goal was to identify what features would have the greatest value for our audience while considering developmental and timeline constraints.
Storyboarding
I created text storyboards for both of our personas in order to visualize how our solution could solve the specific pain points they have and how a user may interact with our solution while considering the user's context and goals.
Wireframing
Iterating the core experience of the platform included not requiring users to sign-up. This proved to be crucial in increasing user engagement. I lead the process for creating an app experience
Concept Validation
We conducted testing with different users on our prototype to gain a high-level understanding of what ideas and interfaces the users found intuitive. Below is a summary of their what we learned:
- Users value conciseness when using plugin / viewing website
- It would be beneficial to explanation of the different sections contributing to rating
- Use of colors to show brand rating
This allowed us to find out what is working and what is not and greatly informed our approach to fleshing out our key features.
Introducing Root
A Google extension and web platform that will rate and inform users of a company’s sustainable and ethical practices upon visiting that company’s shopping website. If the user is not satisfied with the rating that they receive, they will have the option to browse sustainable alternatives that we provide them. In addition, we created a website that advertises our plugin and serves as a brand index where users can research brands they're interested in
Below is an overview of the key features:
Below is an overview of the key features:
Brand Rating Pop Up
When visiting a clothing retail website, an pop upwill appear rating that brand in terms of sustainability and ethical practices.
Browse Alternatives
On the pop up, users can browse for sustainable alternatives to the retailer they are viewing.
Brand Index
The brand index contains detailed breakdown of a brand’s practices as well as an explanation for our rating involving different considerations such as ethical practices, certifications, and sustainable materials used.
Browse Alternatives
Users can Search for brands/onlinemarketplaces through our brand index on our website.
Development
Once we validated our designs with another round of semi-structured interviews, we passed the designs over to our developer to code the website.
Reflection
This project really pushed my limits in a variety of ways. While I was comfortable with conducting user research in the past, this was my first time conducting interviews on such a large scale. In addition, this was my first time creating designs for a plugin.
However, I took these as opportunities for growth. In the end, I am very proud of this product. I think that there is such great potential for technology to cause social change and while our project may not fix all the problems in the fashion industry, I hope that it may at least spark a conversation in the right direction.
However, I took these as opportunities for growth. In the end, I am very proud of this product. I think that there is such great potential for technology to cause social change and while our project may not fix all the problems in the fashion industry, I hope that it may at least spark a conversation in the right direction.