Kristina Arnold ─ UX / Service Designer

2 months, 2020

This participatory design project explored how to engage people to reduce carbon emissions together. The mobile app concept aims to connect and inspire environmental conscious fashion lovers to exchange and rent out unloved favorite pieces to avoid new purchases. Eco-feedback intends to create motivation and understanding of the emission reductions.

Tool I used: Sketch, Invision Studio, Adobe XD

Design Process

Following the Double Diamond design process, I started identifying design opportunities by conducting around around twenty semi-structured interviews at Friday for Future demonstrations, student initiatives, with families and individuals more or less active in terms of climate change. Empathizing with people helped identify problem areas that stakeholders care about, ensuring that the final design concept is relevant.

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Design Methods

While the interviews provided context and the Why´s, the problem area was narrowed down by analyzing the interviews in an Affinity Diagram. Researching and understanding how and where people struggle to reduce their carbon footprints, the project found a recurring wish to reduce personal consumption. During the co-design workshop, stakeholders were invited to brainstorm and brainwrite ideas for that design space. Sharing concepts evolved as a recurring concept from all participants.

Methods I used: Semi-structured interviews, Co-Design Workshop Brainwriting, Brainstorming, Affinity Diagram

Design Opportunity

From the interviews and following the workshop, the design decision was taken to focus on reducing fashion consumption. Fast fashion is a large contributor to global climate change and sharing of fashion a way to reduce such consumption. In order to understand existing physical concepts around fashion sharing, I did participant observations at a swapping event and in a swap shop. Issues around logistics, trusting the quality or getting fair deals at large events appeared to be solvable by a digital solution. What if people can swap within a trusted community, get a quick overview of quality and sizes plus feel rewared by having their emissions reductions visualized?

Ideation and Testing

Based on the insights from field research, I prototyped the concept for a mobile app that creates an engaging community experience and encourages sharing fashion between people. In several iterations and user tests with the target audience, I found the innovative visualization of emission reductions per swap and rent-out of a fashion item to motivate and encourage people.

Reflections

The interactions of browsing through items supports the values and unique qualities of fashion, as users confirmed during testing. Visualizing the environmental also positively impacts user engagement and the concept appears to have the potential to motivate people in engaging into swapping and renting fashion.