Overview
What is Reware?
An immersive 13-week program dedicated to fostering sustainability in the clothing and textile industry. Designed to inspire eco-conscious practices, this initiative incorporates gamification to not only educate but also engage and entertain users. Explore the program's diverse features that make learning about textile sustainability a captivating journey.
My Role
I often collaborated closely with my team, engaging in research and interviews to gather insights into shopping behaviors and fashion preferences. This valuable input played a pivotal role in validating and enhancing our design choices. We maintained a balanced distribution of responsibilities within the team, avoiding overburdening any single person. As a result, we collectively conducted research, carried out interviews, and collaborated on visual design tasks.
Team
Jennica Yvonne Hontiveros
Rafael Santana
Josh Lagunas
Kevin Rhoa
Alex Chan
Lourdes Serrano
Mohammed Kamal
Rigoberto Cervantes
Kayla Gayton
Tools
Figma, Miro, Photoshop
Problem
Current state research
In 2018 alone,
17 million tons Of textile waste ended up in landfills - Environmental Protection Agency, 2018 Statistic
It takes 200 years for textiles to degrade in landfills. Meaning it is not going anywhere anytime soon. - Environmental Protection Agency, 2021 Statistic
What is the problem?
Shortened lifecycles of apparel due to fast fashion create enormous textile waste. Unwanted clothing is typically discarded instead of repurposed or recycled.
Research
Competitive Analysis
Direct Competitors (Sustainability-focused educational applications)
Earth Hero- This app evaluates your carbon footprint by having you complete a survey and create a profile. It then monitors your emissions, suggests reduction tasks, and offers educational tips to increase your environmental awareness.
Think Dirty- This app helps you understand product ingredients by explaining their origins and environmental impact. It provides answers about ingredient sourcing and environmental effects, along with free tips, exclusive deals, and updated product information.
LiveGreen- This app helps assess your carbon footprint through a survey and meal input. It then sets tasks and goals to reduce your environmental impact.
Good On You- This educational platform is dedicated to sustainable fashion brands. It offers a vast database with 3000+ brand ratings, focusing on their ethical and sustainability practices. It also provides valuable tips, comprehensive guides, and real-time updates on eco-conscious fashion trends.
Renoon- Renoon is a shopping app tailored to your sustainability preferences. It curates products based on your chosen sustainability focus, such as ocean conservation, recycled materials, organic products, or carbon neutrality. Renoon provides product sustainability information and offers pre-owned clothing. It also has a news feed to keep you updated on sustainability topics.
Indirect Competitors (badges, point systems, leaderboards, or progress tracking)
Fitocracy- This app tracks workouts, awards points for exercise, and unlocks badges as you hit milestones. It has a lively community for connection and learning, along with a Knowledge Center offering daily articles and tips.
Shopkick- Earn 'kicks' by shopping in-store, online, or engaging in app activities like scanning items. Exchange these kicks for gift cards from various retailers like Best Buy, Amazon, and more. Some rewards are instant, while others are delivered via email or mail. Plus, it's a free app!
Forest- Forest aims to reduce screen time by gamifying the process. Users nurture virtual plants during timer sessions, earning coins for successful sessions. These coins buy various plants, including themed ones. Forest also fosters social interaction with leaderboards and collaborative planting with friends, building a motivating community.
Duolingo- Duolingo gamifies language learning on mobile. It offers fun, bite-sized lessons, achievements, badges, leaderboards, and friend challenges. This motivates and rewards users, making language learning engaging and fulfilling.
Health App- The Health app is a built-in iOS application found on every iPhone. It automatically records various health activities like steps, stairs climbed, and running distance without setup. It also offers advanced features, including real-time tracking and user-friendly bar graphs for easy health monitoring.
We observed that 3 out of 5 direct applications lacked sustainability tasks and incentives for new users. As a response, we decided to incorporate these missing elements into our app to engage and retain users. When examining indirect applications, we noticed that badges and achievements were the primary means of user encouragement, influencing our decision to adopt a similar approach. After analyzing these educational applications, we determined that gamification was the ideal approach for our solution.
We decided why not teach them, but also make it fun.
Behavior Archetypes
We also conducted an analysis of behavior archetypes, which played a pivotal role in shaping our design approach. Through this analysis, we identified four distinct archetypes that served as the foundation for our user-centric design considerations.
Advocate Busy Bee Unaware Misinformed
Advocates are individuals who possess knowledge and understanding of eco-friendly living and actively support and promote such a lifestyle.
Busy Bees are individuals who are informed about eco-friendly lifestyles, yet their hectic schedules leave them with limited time to fully embrace and incorporate sustainable practices into their lives.
Unaware individuals are precisely as the term suggests: they lack awareness or knowledge about sustainability. However, they are open and receptive to learning and acquiring new information.
Misinformed individuals lack accurate information on sustainability, and they may not believe that their actions have any significant impact on clothing sustainability. Motivation Psychology
Considering the user's needs and gains, we discussed what could motivate the user to learn and continue to use the application.
Autonomous Motivation
Extrinsic: Rewards, money, prizes
Intrinsic: Internal source for self-determination. Want for knowledge and independence.
Self - Determination Theory
Autonomy: People need to feel in control
Competence: People need to gain mastery of tasks and learn different skills
Connection or relatedness: People need to feel a sense of belonging and attachment to other people
Affinity Diagram
We completed 15 interviews asking questions broken up by demographics, motivation, behavior, societal, and sustainability topics. These interviews helped us make affinity diagrams.
In the interviews, we found high interest/involvement with secondhand shopping
We've also discovered that social media exerts a significant influence on fashion inspiration.
We also observed that clothing donations ranked as the primary method for disposing of clothes, closely followed by up-cycling.
After discussing this we concluded gamification is a good addition to the application. To make the normal tasks feel more rewarding. It also offers room for growth through failure.
We also decided social sharing is a great addition to helping people have that sense of belonging. It offers the chance to really build a community within Reware.
Solution
Machine Learning
Entering information manually can often feel overwhelming and monotonous, but relying on an AI algorithm that utilizes the data provided by the user makes the task far more manageable.
Machine learning is poised to relieve the burden of handling vast quantities of data, reducing the associated stress.
It serves as a potent tool for aiding users in comprehending the extent of their influence.
We made the choice to incorporate machine learning into our platform to empower users with the ability to customize their sustainability learning experience. Recognizing that many of our users are newcomers to the sustainable lifestyle, our aim was to prevent them from feeling overwhelmed by an influx of new ideas. Additionally, we sought to enhance user engagement by introducing various sections of the application. We concluded that integrating machine learning tasks could motivate users to achieve more than they initially anticipated each day.
Gamification
A personal customizable avatar, reward system, and form of challenges/tasks are just some of the gamification features that can be included in the application.
There is also a badge system that changes based on all the tasks you do and will be applied to your account.
The decision to implement a badge system and gamification elements was made with the intention of inspiring and motivating our users. As previously mentioned, our primary focus is on education, but we also want to infuse an element of enjoyment into the experience. The inclusion of avatars and badge systems not only enhances the educational aspect but also fosters new discussions among friends and facilitates the growth of the Reware community.
Social Sharing & Private Logging
A key component of this app will be some form of photo sharing.
From our user interviews, we found that many take inspiration from social media, whether it be friends, celebrities, or fashion pages.
Quickly visualize information showing what they are wearing frequently.
While this application will encompass a wealth of information on social sustainability within the clothing industry, our objective was to take it a step further. We engaged in conversations with users to explore how we could enhance this application's functionality. These discussions revealed that fashion trends and peer influence played pivotal roles in their choices. The influence of social media also emerged as a significant factor, which led to the concept of incorporating social sharing and private logging.
The private logging feature is designed for users to curate their favorite fashion choices, documenting how their style has evolved over time. This serves as a personal record, allowing individuals to track their fashion journey, including the period before embracing sustainable clothing. It offers a visual representation of the transformation the app has brought to their fashion choices, which we recognized as valuable to users.
The decision to incorporate social sharing was influenced by insights from our 15 interviews. Among the participants, nine out of 15 mentioned that their friends served as a source of inspiration for their fashion choices, while eight out of 15 cited the profound impact of social media on their style. Based on this feedback, we concluded that transforming this application into a social platform was a necessary step to align with users' preferences and needs.
Takeaways
Roles
This was one of the first experiences I had working with a team. One thing I would like to have changed in this team was really defining roles more. We had conversations on some of the skills we had at the beginning of this project, but we ended up doing everything collectively. This was super cool too because it gave me a chance to jump on my skills again and polish them some, but the process could have been smoother if we assigned certain people to better use their skills. This project could have been good use for helping us as young designers find the route we want to go in UX too. I still found myself doing something that I enjoyed, but I wonder if the other designers in the project did too.
Research
I also feel we spent a lot more time than needed on research. It was nice to have all the research we did, but it resulted in us spending less time on our mockup and future plans. If we spent half the time we did on research maybe we could have gotten some testing done, and come back with some really cool iterations that would further add to the application.
Thank you!