Awear

A one-stop web-service where you can find garment patterns, fashion trends and knowledge in fashion sustainability

An online service concept

Project Statement:
How do we redirect consumers’ awareness for clothing and understand the need of sustainability?

  • How can we change and bring awareness to people's perception of fast fashion? (consumer behavior)
  • What is the cause of overconsumption in the fashion industry?
  • li How do we create/redirect value for the product and for consumers?

Team of university students from various of courses:

  • Carie Ng (Me) - Branding & Marketing
  • Cecilie Damgaard - Fashion Design
  • Hanne Kristiansen - Pattern Design
  • Jessica Gynthersen - Fashion Design
  • Line Hansen - Innovation & Entrepreneurship
  • Mia Seistrup - Pattern Design

Timeframe:
3 months

Focus Area:
project lead, web design, market research



Our proposal for this project is a one-stop web-service where you can find garment patterns, fashion trends and knowledge in fashion sustainability. Products are 'made to be made again' because it is pattern and good clothes take time to make! This does not prevent people from buying clothes, but provides a better understanding and a new respect for clothes and make them think twice before supporting the over-production of fast fashion industry.

Kicking off the project, we utilize Coolhunting, which is a method divided into 3 phases: the hunt, conceptualization, and documentation. We used this technique to help us conceptualize Circular Economy. On top of that, we discussed and created mindmaps to help us visualize and organize our thoughts and comments.

mindmap on sustainability

Mindmap on Sustainability
As a team, we first started our project with jolting down words that we associate with sustainability within the fashion industry. This is due to the fact that we are a group with 2 fashion designers and 2 pattern designers, so we chosen to focus on an area that we have been studying. This mindmap was also a way to learn about how much one another knows and discover if there are any concepts or topics that spark an interest to continue to explore further.

mindmap on sustainability with UN goals

Relating Our Keywords with UN Goals
As part of the project brief, we had wanted to work with UN goals, however we were unsure of which one. Instead of limiting ourselves to 1 goal to find a solution for, we decided to take our mindmap and consider which goals each topic connects to. This enables us to dive further into each topic and can be in different perspectives depending on the UN goal. After long discussions on each concepts, as a team we had decided to go into the direction of highlighting on fast fashion.

secondary research

Secondary Research
Key statistics on waste management and the fast fashion industry.

After researching, we decided to switch direction to focus on overconsumption instead of waste management.

survey

Survey
Conducting this survey provide a structured and scalable approach to collecting data directly from the target audience. This method helped provide insights on understand preferences, expectations, and pain points of our target group. Through this method, it also helped uncover trends, identify emerging needs, and gauge satisfaction levels. It acts as a guiding light, informing my team about areas that we could target.

fast fashion buyers

Fast Fashion Buyers
We are aware that our target group are fast fashion buyers rather than secondhand or thrifters. This is an area in which we would like to be able to bring awareness and help educate the target group to discover the benefits of alternatives to fast fashion brands.

persona

Persona
The persona that my team has created highlights the values that matter to our target group.

empathy map

Empathy Map
This process enables me to step into the shoes of the target demographic, fostering a deeper sense of empathy. As a result, I can more effectively fit our products/services to resonate with the target group. Additionally, it also provides shared insights for the entire team to have a unified understanding of the target group. The insights gained from creating an empathy map helps making informed decisions that prioritize the end user, leading to more authentic and successful connections with the target group.

From yet another brainstorm, it led to our chosen idea of creating a pattern website that combines with knowledge sharing. This idea uses the group's skills as best as possible. It is a realistic viable solution that is within our skillset and knowledge to create and iterate on. It provides a change in perspective for our target consumers. It highlights that clothes are an investment. We hope to inspire people to use sustainable materials and create products that can be "made to be made again".

concept

Conceptualizing
This is the proposal concept that we presented the idea to a panel of tutors in order to gather insights on any areas that we should give more attention to in order to answer our problem statement.

observation

Spott Observation Analysis
Through looking at a real case of participants that we interviewed, we were able to trace back to how the increase of DIY projects during Covid-19 has impacted the fashion. Using the 5 Step Strategy by Spott to analyse this rising trend helped provided a real case study on the target group for our project.

DART model

DART Model
The DART model is used to help visualize our research and as it narrow downs on what we had plan to do to gain further support evidence. It led to specific trends on waste management within the fashion industry, and how fast fashion is one of the major problems. This determines overproduction being a key factor which formulated the focus of our project.

As our group divided up the tasks to create a prototype that we could test out, my focus was on creating the website that provides all the information and webservice that we are aiming to create with our solution. My focus at this stage of the project was to create the website aspect of our product. Whereas the others with fashion background focused on creating clothing designs and the patterns for said designs. Another team member also went on to focus on a SoMe plan, event planning and designs needed for the various platforms.

sitemap

Sitemap
To make sure that everyone was on the same page, I created a sitemap to ensure all information we wanted to include will have a spot on the website.

brand name

Brand Name
We came up with potential names for our project as a brand identity. We settled on Awear, which is an anagram of 'aware'. As one of the main goals for the brand is to be able to bring awareness of overconsumption in the fashion industry. The pronunciation of the brand is read just like the word ‘aware’ which illustrates the purpose of wanting to be an informant of sustainability within the fashion industry. However, it also highlights the concept of creating fashion garments for yourself, in other words “a something to wear”.

logo design

Logo Design
We wanted a logo that can represent our tagline of "be aware, be yourself" and we settled on a design where the A and W overlapping one another to create a symbolic representation of a window/hole that you look through to emphasis on looking beyond.

website prototype

Website Prototype
Utilizing Wix, I have created a prototype of the web design for this project following the sitemap created. Our initial color choices were aimed to be minimalistic but earthy.

Implementing changes based on feedback was crucial as we wanted our service to resonate with our target audience.

website prototype 2

Changing Color Choice
We wanted to make the website more colorful as it felt too boring, and did not fit the identity of the target group. We decided on utilizing a purple, pink, and orange color scheme.

protocol analysis 1

Protocol Analysis with Focus Group
For testing the website, we conducted a protocol analysis (a think-aloud method) for a focus group. The focus group are of people who were interested in creating their own garments but have little to no experience in regards to how to start.

protocol analysis 2

Protocol Analysis with Focus Group
This method enabled us to have feedback that was insightful to improve our website as well as the process of how users can obtain the article information without it being too overwhelming.


Finalized Version

webservice overview

Our final product was a website with a subscription plan, SoMe activities (such as giveaways and campaigns), and clothing patterns designed by our team. The key artefact to host all the product is our one-stop web-service where you can find garment patterns, fashion trends and knowledge in fashion sustainability. The 3 main elements to the webservice are:

  • Inspriation:trends, collaborations, social media
  • Creation:shop, showcase, events (physical and digital courses)
  • Education:sustainable content, materials, trends

It is important to note that it is not the website itself that would make our target group change in perspective regarding sustainability. We believe that it is through creating a garment and understanding that good clothes takes time to make and with the additional information and guides provided from us that it would help make consumers become more sustainable subconsciously.

Further Improvements: Selling Sustainable Fabrics

Adding the functionality of selling sustainable fabrics on the website, where it could be fabrics that we partnered with or have bought for consumers in order to continue being a one-stop web-service.

Further Improvements: Collaboration with Other Brands and Influencers

Collaboration with sewing machine companies would provide a method of leasing for our target group. Additionally, researching about the rules of working with influencers can help boost brand recognition.