MANIFEST
We need to rethink the way we consume clothes.
Innovating how people use and access clothes, supporting a more sustainable consumption.
01> MANIFEST
Client: Area 52 - PVH Corp.
Area 52 is the innovation lab of PVH (Tommy Hilfiger, Calvin Klein, Warner's, Olga by Warner's, and True&Co.). PVH is one of the world's largest and most admired fashion companies, connecting with consumers in over 40 countries and 7.1B in 2020 global revenues.
Context
A fashion design corporation set me the challenge to rethink and redesign the way people consume fashion.
Project goals
- Redesign & innovate the way people consume and obtain clothes so that the product life is extended or even closed/circular;
- To make a positive impact on people and the environment.
Solution
The solution was to create a digital fashion platform for real-life impact. Connecting causes and an endless wardrobe, so what you wear becomes a statement.
Team and my role
Debora Viegas, Marcos Arruda, Albert Urchukov & Nils Westhoff.
My role: UX Designer, UX Researcher
Timeframe
3 weeks - Manchester UK
Secondary Research
The point of this secondary research was to collect data that deepens our understanding of the problem space.
Trends
INDUSTRY
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The fashion industry faces an "existential crisis", the lockdown has been a wakeup call for the whole industry
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Fashion needs a shared purpose, with a sustainable future as a pole star, as it’s now responsible for 10% of all humanity's carbon emissions.
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Fashion is going digital: digital clothes (like Carlings and Rohbau), virtual fashion shows, virtual influencers, AR-powered virtual try-on.
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New forms of values exchange are emerging (Money, crypto, data, power, time, support).
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Mainstream brands (like Tommy Hilfiger) are starting to commit to 100% digital design.
Trends
CONSUMER
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Consumers are starting to shift towards supporting small, local and independent brands and designers.
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Internet users are moving from sharing as a method of broadcasting themselves, into a way of sharing that has community at its heart.
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A decade-long build-up of bargain shopping culture will be exacerbated by a rise in anticonsumerism.
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Consumers seek out brands that they align with morally more than ever before, with an emphasis placed on conscious products.
Trends
EXPERTS
According to the fashion industry leaders, the COVID-19 pandemic, which has demanded a rethink of so many industry practices, can finally generate an era of slower fashion with fewer seasonal collections, deliveries suited to the weather and fewer markdowns.
“Considering that all of us — I mean us designers — have been complaining about the pace of fashion, about the unsustainable speed that the delivery calendar had us keep, this is for sure a chance to rethink a lot of things, including seasonality.” Donatella Versace
The Problem in Numbers
CARBON
10%
The fashion industry produces 10% of all humanity’s carbon emissions and is the second-largest consumer of the world’s water supply.
PRODUCTION
2x
Clothing production has roughly doubled since 2000.
GARMENTS
60%
While people bought 60% more garments in 2014 than in 2000, they only kept the clothes for half as long.
MICROFIBRES
50 B
Washing clothes releases 500,000 tons of microfibers into the ocean each year — the equivalent of 50 billion plastic bottles.
COLLECTIONS
24
Some brands offer even more. Zara puts out 24 collections per year, while H&M offers between 12 and 16.
WASTE
85%
In total, up to 85% of textiles go into landfills each year. That’s enough to fill the Sydney harbour annually.
TEXTILES WASTE
92 MM
The United Nations Environment Programme states that the equivalent of one garbage truck full of clothes is burned or dumped in a landfill every second. And globally, an estimated 92 million tonnes of textiles waste is created each year.
WATER WASTE
20%
Vast amounts of water are also needed to produce the clothes we wear and the fashion industry is responsible for 20% of global waste water.
For the expert interviews, we spoke with digital fashion designers, digital influencers, a young psychologist, a leader of B-Corps, people from the retail industry, an owner of thrift clothes, a guru of community management and a digital artist. See the following summary, which is a result of their view on the problems around the fashion industry:
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Digital & physical fashion are converging
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Challenges which digital fashion face
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Shifting to a digital-first approach
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Digital as an eco-friendly & accessible alternative to physical fashion
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Value and sustainability at the core level
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Digital fashion democratizes high fashion and makes it accessible to more people.
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Digital fashion is eco fashion, there's no waste and it's carbon-neutral.
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Potential roles of brands to transition to sustainable options
Expert Interviews
We did our user research with young conscious people to (slightly less young) avid shoppers. To summarize their thoughts, we found these key takeaways:
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Desire to support small, local and independent businesses and designers
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The culture of digital influencers favours the intense consumption of fashion
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Behaviour paradox: minimalism X impulse to buy
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Ways to increase the physical and fashion life-span of clothes
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The way you dress expresses not only your aesthetic preferences but also your beliefs
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Cheap and endless wardrobe to show off on social media
User Research
02. Design Research
This is a digest of all the findings, exploration and research for this project.
It includes secondary research like trend analysis, primary research, interviewing potential users and experts.
Primary Research
We did in-depth interviews with 20 people from various backgrounds. During the first week of primary research, we spoke with users and experts in the field. We questioned broad issues around fashion, sustainability, and buying and selling behaviour.
Personas
From these insights, we created 3 personas. Derived from our research, they help us design a user-centric solution. They exist to create empathy, to remind us of who we spoke with and who we're designing for. As our research advanced, our personas also developed.
These key takeaways and the brief lead us to find our problem statement:
How might we make people feel they have an endless wardrobe without owning too much stuff?
Understanding the Context
Driven by a constant hunger for newness and variety, the model of how we make and purchase fashion has rapidly changed over the years. More than ever before, consumers are buying more clothes and keeping them for less time.
Resulting in the fact that global fashion production has doubled over the past 15 years.
Challenge
Therefore, it is no secret that one of the most significant challenges the fashion industry faces is becoming more sustainable. Additionally, we are living in a linear fashion world. Meaning that clothing ends up in landfills from the moment the owner doesn't like it anymore.
An estimated $500 billion value is lost every year due to clothing being barely worn and rarely recycled.
Client Brief
PVH wants to help everybody become even more sustainable: themselves, the consumers and other fashion industry partners. So, with this in mind, the brief asks:
“How might we redesign & innovate the way we consume and access clothes so that the product life is extended or even closed (circular)?”
01. Framing the problem
The traditional fashion model is harming our planet.
Key Takeaways
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Despite the rise of the sustainability movement, the majority of young fast fashion lovers still just want cute, cheap outfits that look great on Instagram.
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Even those who are concerned by environmental issues, still want to look different every day — they don’t really want clothes that last long (like 5–10 years).
"More people will see an outfit online than they probably will in real life."
Mia J.
16 yrs/UK
Area of Opportunity
Digital Fashion
Designers are exploring the future of digital clothing. Digital Fashion is the visual representation of clothes designed and created using computer technologies and 3D software. As our experts told us, there are two types of digital clothing, one is 'digitized' versions of regular clothes (which can use them in virtual fitting rooms), and the other is conceptual clothes, which are designed without the intention to produce them in real life.
They can be eccentric, extravagant, made of non-conventional materials like cellulose, glass, metal, and sometimes they just don't follow any fashion rules and standards. We're mainly focusing on the second type because it's more about sustainability and less about consumerism.
03. Ideation
Generating, creating, and collaborating.
We used this time to reflect on the ideas that have been shared, to generate additional concepts.
04. Deliver
Prototype and Test
As a result of our insight, a little feedback from PVH and going through ideation, we developed different ideas and prototypes. These prototypes iteratively improved on the idea of digital fashion.
Prototype 01
FEEDBACK - Wearby Platform
We interviewed young people from 4 countries to test, learn and improve our service.
1. Cool but just to post a nice photo
“I don’t like to just post a photo on Instagram, but to change a behaviour is powerful.” Daniela, 19 yrs
2. Digital clothes can allow people to try new things and develop new personalities
“Is really important that the clothes resonate with the person using the service.” Aileen, 24 yrs
3. Endless possibilities are freedom
“it would be nice to see yourself in endless combinations of outfits.” Fernando, 22yrs, Spain
A digital wardrobe with digital trendy clothes and a subscription to use exclusive pieces.
Solution
After incorporating feedback from the second iteration, we developed our final solution. Manifest is a digital fashion platform for a real-life impact. It connects endless wardrobe concepts with the idea of clothing as a statement, enabling you to show - or even show off - your beliefs and attitudes. In order to demonstrate its capabilities, we've created our third and final high-fidelity prototype.
Manifest: a platform that drives social impact through digital fashion.
Future Steps
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Big brands could sample their ideas digitally, to test user adoption before they start fabrication.
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Independent digital fashion artists like PassGoalTriple reach a larger audience with their experimental creations.
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Established brands would like to put out certain products for free, connected to an AR experience that drives social impact through their name.
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We want people not only to donate to causes they care about but to be proud to show their support, by giving them a digital artefact to represent that.
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We’re also promoting the idea of swapping digital clothes with the community, which we hope will entice people to do so in real life too.
We would like to see a variety of products on Manifest, with a variety of use cases, created by different entities:
Prototype 02
FEEDBACK
Upon testing this prototype, we realised people see fashion as content. Many want to share a story when they share photos of their clothes. This is clearly an effect of a strong emotional experience, one we decided to take a step further for our last iteration.
Here are the main takeaways:
1. People want to be better for the world
“If it helps people to become more conscious about consumerism, it is really nice.”Diego, 23yrs
2. Your outfit can express what you stand for
“Fashion is a story I consume and expose to others.” Daniel, 32 yrs
3. I want to show more content and story behind a piece of clothes
“For me, it is important to know how to help a cause and the real story behind it."Catarina, 18 yrs
This prototype was about creating an experience around digital fashion. An AR treasure hunt to find digital clothes around the world. They can be found at specific places worldwide and can be traded globally, connecting people, brands and places together.
Reflection
Prototypes and Test
The Prototype and Test stages had three iterations during the development of our project. This shows how the design process is not linear; there is a chance to go back and repeat some phases when necessary, over and over again. Testing with users was fundamentally important to improve our solutions, collect new information, gain deep empathy, embrace missteps, and request customer feedback.
Conclusion
Learnings
It became clear to me that experience design is not static, nor a simple recipe to be followed. The processes and methodologies serve as a guide, but by placing the human being at the centre of the process, experiences are designed to be unique for each individual. Designers need to learn, invent, create and fulfil human needs and desires to create meaningful and impactful experiences.
