Faster Fashion On Campus
By Diane Du, Lani Dang, Eman Mustefa, Kristy Nhan
Problem and Solution Overview
A prevalent issue related to sustainability is fast fashion and overconsumption as college students and young people who enjoy fashion and clothes, but are on a budget and may not be able to afford turning over their closet every season or buying from pricier, slow fashion brands. We find this problem particularly relevant to UW college students who enjoy fashion but are on a budget as students and young people are often a demographic that contributes to and participates in fashion trends and fads. However, they are also typically conscious of their finances, especially if they are not working or cannot work high-paying jobs with a steady income. To address this problem, we propose a mobile app that allows UW students to buy, sell, and trade clothes with each other through a messaging service for the buyer and seller to communicate with, along with an on-campus drop-off box location finder.
Design Research Goals, Stakeholders, and Participants
For the issue of fast fashion and clothing overconsumption, as mentioned above, one of the main stakeholders for our solution are UW college students. Other possible stakeholders also include: more broadly, people who enjoy and participate in fashion and trends; parents with young children who likely cycle through many clothes due to growth; and people who are moving or have limited storage space and are looking to downsize.
In order to explore the current habits and climate surrounding college students’ fashion, we decided to conduct interviews as well as send out surveys to our target user group. We interviewed three UW students from varying years and majors in order to have a diverse sample of participants. For our interviews, we asked the interviewees questions regarding their personal shopping and closet habits. For our surveys, which we posted on social media and public forums, we had less in-depth questions such as “How often do you buy new clothes?” that were presented as multiple choice and therefore easier to gain a large amount of data from our 34 participants.
Since our main research is based on students’ shopping and closet habits, we decided to choose interviews and surveys as our design research methods since we cannot have observational methods. Our goal is to better understand how much our participants contribute to fast fashion and what their personal shopping and closet habits are. While surveys allow for a larger sample of data to analyze for general themes, interviews can subsequently provide us with more detailed user stories and experiences.
Design Research Results and Themes
Among our participants, the majority of them shop fast fashion. In total about 75% of our respondents shopped at fast fashion stores. We also found that about ⅔ people normally shop online. The most popular fast fashion brands like Shein and Yesstyle are online retailers. Participants can choose to shop mainly online and fast fashion due to convenience. This could be due to UW students lacking personal transportation to get to stores in person often and also lack the time commitment necessary to shop in person, which a couple of our participants noted. This means that convenience and ease of use is something we should design for. This can include making sure that drop off locations are located on campus or other places where students are often to frequent throughout their busy weeks, or having participants choose times and locations that work for them best when meeting in person.
Another common theme was that many people are already familiar with the secondhand economy, in one form or another. About 50% have borrowed clothes from other people or have let others borrow from them. A couple of respondents also answered that they have shopped or currently shop from second-hand stores. Also, the top two things people do with their old clothes are donate it or give it away to family or friends. This means that we should focus on expanding these numbers by including tools to make these tasks easier, for example including thrift shops locators, stores that buy used clothing items, and giving them a wider variety of clothing to choose from.
A common concern when surveying and speaking to participants about the potential to buy and trade clothes with other UW students was safety. This was expressed in mainly two different ways. One way it was talked about was in regard to communication. Participants want there to be a clear and safe communication line between two users, like making sure someone completes their end of the deal and doesn’t back out. They mentioned other websites with similar purposes such as Facebook Marketplace and Depop. This tells us that communication is an integral part needed to include. Another way safety was a concern was in the form of physical safety. We asked participants how comfortable they would be with exchanging clothes with a stranger in person. This means our design must include various safety precautions, which could be through a security code making sure you’re meeting with the right person, hosting weekly group meetups, and limiting meetups to specific times of days or locations through the app.
Proposed Design
Based on our research, we noticed that our participants were very open to trading with other UW students but have very busy schedules. In order to accommodate that, we decided to go with our second design, the drop off location application. This allows us to easily integrate into our participants’ everyday lives and this design allows them to do a quick drop off at one of our locations when they are on their way to class or studying for an exam on campus. Additionally, most of our participants’ concerns were safety and our design allows them to do no contact trade offs and be given a verified code before picking up the item to assure that they don’t get scammed.
Lastly, our design has a sort and filter option to help users find specific clothes they are looking for with ease, within a specific price range.
