Research & Development
The Problem
According to our research, people tend to value their clothing very highly. However, it can need a lot repair, maintenance, and care. With this information, we chose to focus on developing a product that makes clothing care easier, more accessible, or more affordable.
The Research Goal
We hoped to determine people's relationship to their clothes and what they are doing currently to care for their clothing. Additionally, we wanted to understand their knowledgeability around textile repair and care, and learn how/what textiles most often get damaged in the first place.
Initial Research + Interviews
We chose four participants of varying ages. We conducted interviews in participant's homes, asking them questions about their textiles and their relationships to them. We also had them participate in Directed Storytelling: We asked our participants about a time when they damaged their clothes and how they repaired them, to help us better understand how textiles get damaged, and how people are currently fixing the problem.
Findings
1.
Common issues were stains, damage from improper care, and damage from use
2.
Repairing and maintaining textiles is costly, time consuming, and inconvenient.
3.
People lack the knowledge about how to properly care for and maintain their clothes.
Idea Generation
Understanding where the problems lie, each member of the group sketched 20 potential solutions, for a total of 60 design ideas.
Down Selection
After analyzing our 60 ideas carefully and as a group, we chose the top three ideas that we felt would be the most accessible, affordable solution to the problem. We chose to move forward with was the Hanging Care Label as it most closely matched our how might we statements, as well as the shoe rack leaving some care information out, and the fashion line lacked affordability.
More Research
Next we conducted a workshop to understand how people would use the care labels in practice, and what needs to be included in them for maximum efficacy. Our workshop included the following
1.
Making
Students were asked to design an alternate care label for a shirt, a pair of pants, and a pair of shoes.
2.
Telling
Students were asked to walk us through their tag designs as well as what specific information they found most important to include.
3.
Enacting
Students were given a prototype of a detachable care label and asked to show us how they might use it in a real world scenario.
Findings
1.
Students were careless about keeping track of the detachable tag, therefore our design must have a designated space, or not be detachable.
2.
Students do not understand the icon language of care tags, therefore our tag must be clear and easy to understand.
3.
Tags need to stay in close proximity to their textiles, yet be descreet if worn.
Switching Gears
Re-thinking the problem
We were fully committed to the care label, working on QR codes and special hangers providing detailed and precise care information about each garment, when we ran into a problem... A huge part of caring for your clothes lies in how you wash and dry them. And a hanger is used when putting clothing away. Besides that, people don't typically inspect and divide their laundry if it's already together in one basket. They wash it together. We knew we had to switch gears, and went back through our ideas, with the knowledge that our research had provided us. We learned that sometimes, the solution you put the most time into is'nt necessarily the correct solution.
Story-boarding the new solution
Enter the new solution: an intuitive laundry sorting system. It has different laundry bags for the four most common types of loads, with classic laundry icons that correspond to the clothes that need to go in them. In addition, fabric samples of the most common fabrics that get washed in each load are sewed onto the bags. Users can sort their clothes into the provided laundry baskets by matching the tags on their clothes with the icons on the bag, or by matching the material by the samples on the bag.
Final Product
