Friendly Fashion

Project Overview

As part of my HCI Master’s program at UCL, I collaborated on a project to design an augmented reality (AR) experience, Friendly Fashion, to encourage more sustainable consumer choices. The project focused on addressing the environmental impact of fast fashion by providing users with real-time sustainability information about clothing while they shopped in a physical retail environment. Using AR glasses, users could view details on the environmental effects of different fabrics and production processes, enabling more responsible purchasing decisions.

I played a central role in conducting user research and synthesising the results. I led efforts to design and distribute a questionnaire that helped us understand consumer behaviors, attitudes toward sustainability, and their familiarity with AR technology. I also contributed to ideation and prototyping phases, specifically working on developing personas, sketching concepts, and testing the mid-fidelity prototype with users.

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Problem and Research

In the Research and Requirements Gathering phase of the project, the team sought to understand both consumer behaviour and the potential impact of AR on promoting sustainable fashion choices. This stage involved a combination of secondary research through a literature review and primary research using survey.

Literature Review:
The literature review explored the environmental impacts of the fashion industry, such as high waste production, excessive water usage, and greenhouse gas emissions. The fashion industry is a significant contributor to global environmental issues, producing over 92 million tonnes of waste per year and utilising 79 trillion liters of water. Consumers, especially in high-income countries, often lack accessible ways to make informed, sustainable clothing choices​. The key barriers consumers face when trying to make sustainable fashion choices, including limited access to information, time constraints, and overwhelming amounts of data. The team discovered existing uses of AR in fashion, like virtual fittings, but noted a gap in leveraging AR specifically for sustainability awareness. To address this, we designed an AR experience that directly informs users about the environmental impacts of clothing at the point of sale.

Online Survey:
To gather primary data, the team conducted an online survey with 23 participants to gather insights on shopping behaviours, attitudes toward sustainability, and the potential adoption of AR for this purpose. The survey targeted consumers from the UK and the US, regions in the Global North, where overconsumption of fashion is most prevalent. Questions were designed to assess both the participants' awareness of sustainable fashion practices and their attitudes toward AR technology. Key findings revealed that:

1. Consumers found it time-consuming to research the sustainability of fashion items.
2. There was strong interest in AR, though many had limited prior experience with it.
3. Consumers were intrigued by the possibility of using AR to make informed purchasing decisions.

Key Insights:
The survey data was analysed using an affinity diagram, which helped categorise consumer pain points and desires. Insights included:

1. Consumers expressed difficulty accessing digestible, real-time information on the sustainability of clothing.
2. There was interest in the potential for AR to simplify the process and make information more accessible at the point of sale.
3. Users reported they would be more likely to use AR if it provided useful, easy-to-understand information without feeling gimmicky.

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Personas and Requirements:
Based on the research findings, the team developed user personas to represent the target audience. These personas highlighted the need for clear, actionable sustainability information that can be quickly accessed through AR without disrupting the shopping experience. The personas guided the design process, ensuring the final product would meet users' needs for convenience, accessibility, and clarity in promoting sustainable choices.

By gathering insights from both existing literature and primary user research, the team was able to define clear user requirements and inform the design of the AR experience, ensuring that it addressed real consumer pain points while promoting responsible consumption in a tangible, engaging way.

Design Process

Our team followed a user-centered design process. We used the results from our survey to develop key insights, including that consumers felt overwhelmed by the time and effort required to research sustainability, and that they were interested in the potential of AR but had limited experience with it. Using these insights, we created personas to guide our design decisions and ensure that the user’s needs were prioritised at every stage​.

We explored several design ideas using a Crazy-8 brainstorming exercise, where we sketched potential solutions for integrating AR in a shopping experience. We eventually converged on a concept that combined AR glasses with an immersive in-store experience, allowing users to interact with physical garments while receiving AR-generated information on sustainability factors like carbon emissions, water usage, and biodegradability​.

Prototypes and User Testing

Throughout the project, we developed three different types of prototypes—low-fidelity, mid-fidelity, and high-fidelity—to ensure that our design was user-centered and aligned with our goals of promoting sustainable consumption through an augmented reality (AR) experience.

1. Low-Fidelity Prototype: Storyboard

Our initial prototype was a low-fidelity storyboard that visualised the overall concept of the AR experience. This sketch-based prototype consisted of a series of illustrations that demonstrated the user's journey, starting from when they enter the shopping center, put on the AR glasses, and interact with clothing items. Each frame depicted key moments in the experience, such as seeing the sustainability information floating beside the garments and learning about the environmental impacts of different fabrics.

This prototype was crucial in helping the team articulate the concept clearly and enabled us to gather early feedback without significant time or resource investment. It allowed us to ensure the flow of the experience was understandable and that the main touchpoints (e.g., the AR glasses providing information) were effectively communicated. Feedback from this stage informed us that users found the experience easy to understand, but they were curious about the level of detail the AR system would provide on sustainability.

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2. Mid-Fidelity Prototype: Wizard-of-Oz Testing

Next, we created a mid-fidelity Wizard-of-Oz prototype to test the user interaction and the delivery of AR content. In this type of prototype, we simulated the AR experience manually, without the actual technology in place. For this test, we recruited six participants and had one of our team members act as the “wizard,” providing the AR information on cue as the participants interacted with physical clothing items. Participants were given a pair of regular glasses to simulate AR glasses, while we used labels and cards to simulate the floating information that would normally appear in an AR setting.

During the test, participants interacted with clothing items, while a member of our group manually presented environmental data (e.g., "This fabric uses 90% less water" or "This t-shirt will take 50 years to biodegrade"). The Wizard-of-Oz method enabled us to collect valuable data on how users would react to the sustainability information and what kind of interactions they expected. This phase helped us discover that users preferred seeing positive sustainability information (such as reductions in water usage) rather than negative information (such as how much carbon was produced during the manufacturing process).

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3. High-Fidelity Prototype: Video Simulation

Our final prototype was a high-fidelity video prototype that combined elements of the first two prototypes but simulated a more realistic AR experience. In this video, users were shown a walkthrough of the AR experience as it would appear in a real shopping center. The video featured someone wearing AR glasses while interacting with clothing items, with digital sustainability information appearing beside the items as they were viewed. This high-fidelity prototype enabled us to more accurately convey the interaction flow and the look and feel of the final product, showcasing how the AR technology would be integrated into the shopping environment.

This prototype was instrumental in user testing because it provided a closer approximation of the actual experience. During this phase, users watched the video and then participated in interviews where we gathered feedback on the realism, usability, and potential impact of the AR experience on their purchasing behavior. Most users were impressed by the concept and indicated that the AR information could significantly influence their buying decisions, especially if it was easy to understand and quickly accessible during shopping. They also appreciated the immersive aspect of the AR experience, which they felt added value compared to traditional methods of learning about sustainability.

These different fidelity prototypes enabled us to refine our design iteratively, ensuring that we met user expectations at each step. Each prototype helped us better understand how users would engage with AR technology in a shopping environment, and the feedback from these phases informed our final design decisions.

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Final Product

The final product, Friendly Fashion, was designed as an immersive AR experience in shopping centres. Users would wear AR glasses to explore various aspects of fashion sustainability, such as fabric types and their environmental impacts. The glasses displayed key facts about items as users interacted with them, helping them make more informed purchasing decisions​.

The experience began with users encountering piles of clothing that symbolised the growing amount of fashion waste, followed by displays where they could feel different fabrics while receiving sustainability information through the AR glasses. This setup aimed to create a memorable and educational shopping experience that encouraged behaviour change.

Key Takeaways & Reflection

Through this project, I gained valuable experience in designing with emerging technologies such as augmented reality. I also deepened my understanding of how immersive experiences can drive behaviour change, particularly in promoting sustainability. One of the key challenges we encountered was balancing user experience with the content being delivered in the AR display. Testing multiple prototypes allowed us to refine our approach and gather meaningful insights into user preferences and engagement with the technology.

This project was an exciting opportunity to explore the intersection of UX design, AR technology, and sustainability. It reinforced my interest in using immersive technologies to address real-world problems, and I’m eager to apply the skills I developed in future projects. As AR continues to evolve, I believe it will play a critical role in creating more engaging, informative, and socially responsible user experiences across various industries, from fashion to other consumer products.

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