Environmental Transparency in Fashion
TEAM: Cristina Vidal Amian, Marta Adan Ballester, Simone Bertaiola, Samuel Cartmill, Kristof van der Fluit, Irene Gonzalez, Covadonga Garcia-Valdes
TOOLS USED:
Storyboard
Stakeholder Map
Personas
Empathy Map
Business Model Canvas
PESTEL Analysis
Stakeholder Map
SUMMARY
At its current size, the fashion industry is contributing to its fair share of global warming, carrying environmentally damaging impacts that many are unaware of. Churning out fashion items at an alarming rate, roughly 20 items per living person1, the industry’s ‘fast fashion’ trend is simply unsustainable.
Through prototyping and iterative design, based on consumer feedback, a simple elegant concept has been developed: eTag. A 4x2.5cm cotton label, placed in every participating clothing item, providing transparency in the fashion industry. The solution is two pronged: the label shines a light on a garment’s metrics including water usage and CO2 emissions, in addition to a QR code acting as a gateway to an interactive user-friendly platform. Here, users can learn more about the history of their garment when they buy it, keep track of the items they own in their ‘Virtual Wardrobe’ and, at access clear guidance on the recyclability of their item when the time comes to dispose of it.
What says this will work? Research. Through consumer surveys (70% of the 143 target audience members questioned said they would use it), personal interviews and journey maps, the concept is as tried-and-tested as it could be.
From a business viewpoint, the model is sustainable. Projected to break even come year 4 (year 3 if you’re optimistic), eTag will reap the benefits of the annual 19% growth in the sustainable fashion industry.
Financial feasibility aside, eTag is also about awareness. This solution provides a user friendly, people-centred system, encouraging a cleaner, healthier fashion industry. Its time to join the sustainable movement once and for all.
SIGNIFICANT STAGES OF THE PROCESS
We went off to explore our hunches in more depth. Having created distinct idea spaces, this was our launch into our discovery phase. At this stage we conducted user observations in the homes of six students. The observation sessions were formatted in three parts.
First we learnt about the students daily life to build a PERSONA, followed up by three tasks to perform, in which no speaking accured only OBSERVATION , followed by an INTERVIEW around the two passion areas ‘Label’ and ‘Social’. To summarise our findings, we created an empathy map.
The discover phase highlighted the need for a simple, non-intrusive, impactful solution to create more awareness towards clothing items for millenials. As a group in order to converge and focus on a specific problem, we carried out a GUT CHECK and defined our problem statement. This is where we used the empathy map to identify the concept with the most potential and graded it against user needs. This directed our focus to LABEL.
To develop the idea further, we pulled all our learnings together and sketched ideas. To develop our concept, we used ‘What if’s’ and ‘Mash-up’ tools from IDEO to combine extremeties, or functions crossing different concepts to to include more desirable outcomes. The outcome of this session was to find a prototype to user test and validate.
