mark is an all-in-one wardrobe assistant that tracks the in's and out's of one's wardrobe, provides suggestions, and allows for trading between users.
Client
none
Scope
3 months
October - December 2017
Role
Research
Strategy
UX Design
Team
Individual project
Overview
mark is a service start-up using innovative technology to address the problems of sustainability and mass consumption in the fast fashion industry. While the industry has a plethora of issues throughout the supply chain, the focus of this project was to change consumer behavior and the culture of disposability so prevalent in clothing today.
Background
Fast fashion is a term used to describe the fast pace of moving trends from the catwalk and into stores for people to buy. While the intention of making fashionable items more widely available to the public sounds innocuous, there are a large number of negative implications.
Faster production cycles mean more unethical labor. Demanding that clothes be produced faster puts a strain on workers in factories who have to work under unfavorable and often unsafe conditions. While it’s easy to point the blame at the factory managers who force their workers to continue churning out products, this is ultimately systemic – driven by the monetary incentives of big businesses to meet an ever-rising consumer demand.
Cheap labor enables cheap prices. The demand of increasingly cheaper prices of clothing is passed onto the means of production, which must also be commensurately cheap. Wages for textile labor is extremely low, with workers having to work very long hours just to sustain themselves. Moreover, the demand for cheap labor often means that child labor is also hired in order to meet it.
Quality of clothing suffers, and thus, clothing must be replaced more frequently. This means more labor, more money for consumers to spend, and a lot more waste that goes into landfill.
To make more money, companies operate under 52 fashion cycles, which is designed to make people feel as though their clothes are already unfashionable within one week’s time. This makes people buy more and more clothes in order to keep up with the trends.
Fast fashion is very difficult to escape, as big companies have wide reach and scale, enabling them to have cheaper prices and more stores to make their items available to more consumers. For consumers, combatting fast fashion by voting with one’s wallet may also prove difficult, as it entails not only a higher price tag, but also a more conscious effort – both of which can be a large leap for the average consumer to take.
Journey of a Garment
Research
Contextual interviews
The focus of the primary research for this project revolved around one-on-one interviews with the target user group. I wanted to discover their behaviors, philosophies around fashion, and what they might desire to change about their relationship with fashion. In total, I conducted 15 contextual interviews, with four males and eleven females.
codiscovery: wardrobe tours
To immerse deeper into user behavior, I conducted a co-discovery activity and asked my participants to give a tour of their wardrobes, explaining how they organize their clothes, how they get dressed in the morning and any other unique details.
codesign
For a codesign workshop, I held a swap meet where I asked participants to bring in clothing that had found its way to the back of their wardrobes. The focus of the workshop was in telling the stories of those articles of clothing.
Stakeholder Map
Map of relationships between all stakeholders in the fast fashion industry.
Key Insights
Unique and varied ways for clothing to exit wardrobes
Everyone has their own methods, from handing down to younger ones, giving to domestic workers, or selling secondhand.
Culture of borrowing between friends
Circles of 'fashionable' friends breed a culture of borrowing, enabled by a similar style, relational closeness, and geographic proximity.
Selective investment in trends
A lot of thought is put into whether or not to 'invest' in a trend, with some waiting to see if a trend will last, and others jumping in to get the most out of it.
Stories are important, but only to that particular person
While clothing has a lot of sentimental value to people, unfortunately it isn’t a selling point for that piece of clothing in the context of giving it a second life
Existing networks of ‘stylish’ friends
Those who identify as being interested in fashion tend to surround themselves with people who have those similar interests and preferences.
Clothes sitting idly in closets
People rarely use 100% of their wardrobe, with the percentage that actually gets worn being less than half. This leads to a tremendous amount of untapped value sitting in the majority of homes.
Synthesis
Archetype Matrix
Practical Shopper
The practical shopper is of course someone who shops practically; she returns to brands that she trusts – some may be fast fashion and others may not be. However, she does shop quite frequently and makes the odd ‘bad’ decision with clothing.
Steve Jobs
AKA Mark Zuckerberg - designed for pure functionality and no second thoughts.
Trend Spotter
The trend spotter likes to play around with the different trends that pop up. Fashion is a part of his lifestyle and clothes cycle in and out of his wardrobe quite frequently.
High Fashion Investor
The high fashion investor is another person who takes fashion very seriously. She knows a lot about different brands, and most items in her wardrobe are ‘investment pieces’, with each piece almost always have a second or third life. She has developed a very distinct style that is slow changing.
Personas
Ecosystem Map
Map narrowed down to specific ecosystem for project, with project intervention.
Opportunity
How might we extend the life of idle clothing in the wardrobes of young professionals?
Concept Design
mark is an online mobile wardrobe management service that allows users to keep track of all the items in their wardrobe, in order to ensure adequate wear for all items. Oftentimes we forget what exactly we own, with research showing that we don’t use our closets to their full potential. As a result, we waste valuable input resources, money, as well as the finished textiles that go into landfills at the end of a garment’s life cycle. mark prevents all this by tracking the wear count and history of all clothing items in your wardrobe, and nudging you to wear items that may have been forgotten, as a means to increase wears. It also offers suggestions on what and how to wear certain items, as well as providing a sustainable exit and new home for clothing that doesn’t suit you anymore, through a trading platform.
How it works
mark uses RFID technology to track items coming in and out of your closet, in order to produce outfit suggestions as well as log outfit history.
UI design
Browse entire closet; view important data
View all outfit history by date
Trade items with other users on the platform
Receive suggestions on how to wear items & keep track of usage
Map of Service
Key stakeholders in the mark service, and the interactions between them.
