Mother

Semester 1
2024UI Design
UX Design
Group Work

Overview

The Fast Fashion industry is one of the most polluting and wasteful on the planet. Cheaper clothes have come at a considerable ecological and human cost. Today, the industry is responsible for 8-10% of global carbon emissions, 20% of industrial water pollution, and 35% of microplastic waste.

At the start of 2024, I developed a design solution to adddress this issue for a course called 'Designing for Social Impact'. Working in teams, we were asked to create a socially-conscious app addressing one of the 16 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). My group of four chose goal 12, Responsible Production and Consumption, a ten-year commitment to "[make] fundamental changes in the way that our societies produce and consume goods and services".

_{UN SDG 12}

We considered several options for creating alternatives to fast fashion before landing on a solution that's novel and a lot of fun: changing the purchasing habits of consumers with an app that challenges them to justify their fast fashion purchases at the point of sale. I'm very proud of what we were able to be made, and the final figma prototype can be seen here, and experienced through two flows here.

_{The intended flow of the final prototype: Users attempt a purchase in a typical fashion app, only to be confronted by a popup from Mother challenging them to justify their use of it. If they choose to not make their purchase, their prudence is rewarded in the app.}

_{My presentation slide for the typical garment supply chain, sourced from Niimaki et al, 2020.}

_{The high-level themes from our final affinity diagram. The full diagram can be viewed here.}

Research

We began by reading over the full list of 16 UN SDGs and considering issues that we would be able to address within the scope of our eventual final deliverable of a UI prototype. After extensive discussion, we decided to look at fast fashion through UN SDG 12, as we all had a mutual interest in fashion and all shared the experience of making too many impulse purchases. We then delegated responsibilities for our research. I volunteered to do most of the secondary research, as I was confident in my research skills, which I acquired through an earlier Bachelor of Political and Social Sciences degree. Primary research was divided between my other three group members, with each choosing to do interviews, surveys and online ethnography, respectively.

We found a remarkable level of correlation between the data collected by all our research methods. I had been somewhat aware of the issues with fast fashion, but I still found my research into reports from NGOs and other fashion industry researchers to be quite shocking. Essentially: it is impossible for clothes to be made this cheaply without a considerable ecological cost. The materials used in Garment production are very cheap, but labour is expensive, so manufacturing is spread across the entire world to find the cheapest concentrations of skilled workers. It is extremely common for a garment to pass through several different countries in its production process before final retail sale to first-world consumers. After years of scandals and coverage, surveys of consumers find this to be common knowledge, but this awareness does not greatly influence consumer behaviour because of limited information when purchasing. Without time to do research, and no real reason to trust more expensive 'sustainably-made' brands, most consumers continue to choose the cheaper option.

After collating the primary research collected by my colleagues with an affinity diagram, we found it correlated very strongly with the insights from my secondary research. A vast majority of our interview and survey respondents were aware of issues in the fashion industry, but felt disempowered to make better choices with a limited time and budget. From this, we concluded that selling more sustainable clothes would not enough of a solution, and that it would be better to encourage consumers to buy less, but more conscientiously.

We synthesised all of our findings into an affinity diagram (which can be seen here.), and a single problem statement to orient our design moving forward:

While most consumers are aware of the social, environmental, and ethical challenges posed by fast fashion, their capacity to adopt more sustainable practices is constrained by time and budget.

Ideation

With a strong idea for the shape of our potential solution, each group member was tasked with coming up with an original idea, targeted at people like us: fashion-conscious consumers under the age of 30.

We landed on three final concepts:

'Sewlution', an app to suggest repairs and alterations for already-owned clothes.
'The People's Wardrobe', a system of communal wardrobe rental.
My idea, 'SSHAME', an app and browser extension that confronts the user at the point of sale and challenges them to list times they will actually wear the garment.

We then compared our three ideas with a decision matrix, ranking each on how they address core user needs and their functionality as an app. The winner was SSHAME, as we concluded that it was the most novel, most focused on causing positive behavioural shifts, and the easiest to show with a Figma prototype.

Final Concepts

Prototyping

With a final concept we moved forward to our first wireframes and prototypes. I did sketches to flesh out my initial idea into a basic UI flow, in the form of an app overlay that slides over other fashion apps when a purchase is about to be made. To incentivise further engagement, the user can also catalogue their wardrobe in the app, and see purchases made by friends.

My colleagues then got to work on the first low-fidelity wireframes. Our goal was to establish the full scope of the app, so the focus was mostly on the design and page layout, and a set of core features. Initially, this included more ambitious ideas for 3D user avatar that clothing could be 'previewed' on, a wishlist, and a full social network style interface for sharing outfits with friends. Though its good to encourage users to think more about their purchase, we felt that these ideas were too ambitious and too much of a distraction for the user to navigate, so they were cut from the final prototype.

It's here where we also started to decide on a brand identity for the app. SSHAME was a funny idea for the initial pitch, but we felt that a system of entirely negative reinforcement wasn't ideal for changing user habits in the long term. I came up with a new name: Mother, evoking the earth, queer slang for dressing well, and gentle disapproval from an authority figure.

_{The presentation slide from our final concept pitch explaining the branding change.}

_{My first sketch for the intended flow of Mother, showing the user being intercepted trying to purchase something on a fast fashion app.}

_{Our initial information hierarchy. Mostly unchanged in the final prototype, but with a focus on tracking over social features and discounts.}

_{The first wireframe iterations, showing the scope being stripped back from a larger set of features to a simpler tracker interface.}

_{The final high-fidelity flow.}

Final Prototype

Our final high-fidelity prototype refined our concept down to a simple core loop with a strong aesthetic. Instead of a more elaborate experience based around a social network-like interface, we shifted to a simple lightweight app for logging purchases and not-purchases, then tracking and cataloguing your progress over time akin to apps like Letterboxd.

We conducted three rounds of think-aloud testing and found that our users quickly understood the premise of the app and enjoyed the experience, with only minor suggested aesthetic changes to icons and colours to ensure that the interface of the 'overlay' portion of the app contrasts adequately with the fashion apps it 'interferes' with. The prototype received a SUS (System Usability Scale) score of 97.

I designed the logo, choosing a clear black and white design of a sexy, Bratz-doll esque globe, conveying both the humour, judgement, and fashion focus of the app.

Conclusion

Our final submission was very well-received by our peers and faculty and recieved a high distinction grade. After our presentation, a few people in the audience told me that they would use the app if it exists.

Though Mother is not a complete solution to the issue of fast fashion, something like it could be a good first step, and I'm very proud of the work we were able to do.