Dapper Dany
Your sustainability-focused closet clean-up companion.
Team
Problem and Design Overview
[E]very year, people in the United States throw out more than
34 billion pounds of used textiles.(Lundberg and Devoy)
The recycling of clothing is rare as well. [O]nly 15% of used textiles are theoretically ‘recycled’,
and of those, up to half are simply shipped abroad to other countries, largely in the Global South
where they land in landfills.(Lundberg and Devoy)
If people gained the capability to track which clothes they wore the least and were incentivized
in some way to donate them, we could significantly reduce the number of clothes wasted every year.
This leads us to our design, Dapper Dany, the smart mirror paired with a phone app used to assist people
in keeping track of clothes worn regularly, promoting donating unused clothes and learning about
brand sustainability practices. Our design has many features which streamlines the process of reducing
waste for the average person. Some including: line charts displaying monthly statistics of the percentage
of clothes worn in a wardrobe and clothes donated, clothing brand sustainability information on the
mirror when clothes are worn in front of the mirror, incentivizing donating clothes by giving points
to people to use for decorating their mirror when unused clothes are donated and many more.
An overview image of three highlighted features on the mirror and app of our design: points and sticker prizes for donating, brand sustainability information and an intuitive step by step process for donating unused clothing.
Design Research Process and Key Insights
We wanted to understand why there is so many textile waste every year. The first approach we
considered to understand the cause of this problem is people's personal habits when it comes to
how often they use most of their clothes in their closet and what they do when they have clothes
they don't want any more. By understanding the cause of the issue, we can then proceed with solutions.
We restricted our research to target people around the ages of 18-25 since people around
these ages are more interested in fashion and are more influenced by social media and
trends regarding fashion. There has been more consumption and waste of clothes in the past decade
due to social media promoting fast fashion. There are many videos online about clothing
hauls from fast fashion brands like Shein where people promote and unbox large amounts
of cheap clothing they buy from these brands. Due to how prevalent fast fashion is becoming in
social media and how much waste fast fashion promotes, the 18-25 age demographic is best
to target in our goal of creating a design focused on reducing textile waste.
We designed two surveys which asked questions about demographic information
(age, college status, and gender), clothing usage (only included in the second survey)
and purchasing habits, brand knowledge, personal sustainability habits and interest
regarding clothing usage tracking (only included in the second survey). The surveys
were distributed to friends, Ed Stem, UW discord servers, a r/SampleSize reddit thread and
the UW Fashion RSO Mesh. We received 28 responses for the first survey and 52 responses for
the second survey. We created surveys to obtain the most information we can in a short amount of
time to obtain different perspectives and backgrounds in our demographic as well as allowing us
to see patterns in people's behaviors leading to textile waste.
An Underinformed Population
Of the 80 people who responded to the survey, none of them were accurate in their estimation regarding the amount of textile waste every year in the United States. The closest person was several billion above the actual answer, but almost all of the other particpants guessed billions of pounds less. The varied, inaccurate responses showed our team that information about textile waste is not widely known and isn't really a piece of information seek out on their own. This insight helped us understand that it was important to spread this fact and more about sustainability issues to the people involved with our design.
Efficiency Is Key
People already have busy lives, so asking them to add something new to their routine can sometimes be daunting. We found that the busyness of people's lives became exceedingly relevant when we asked our participants about their major concerns regarding our designs. The overwhelming response was that people were hesitant to manually log all their clothing into an app, and that this process would likely deter them from using our design if it was required. After learning this information, our team realized we needed to find a way to make it easy and automatic for a person to track everything in their wardrobe. Not only that, but if we could automate other tasks, like documenting current outfit choices, this might make our design even more appealing to our intended audience.
None of the participants from our survey gave an accurate estimate of textile waste in the US.
Listing a person's entire wardrobe can be a tiresome, frustrating chore.
People Don't Wear Everything They Own
Our team agreed that we had more clothes than we actually wore, but we wondered how applicable this was to the rest of the population. To handle this curiosity, we asked the participants in our survey what percentage of clothing they own do they wear regularly. As we expected, only 7.4% of the participants said they wore 90% or more of the clothing items they owned. Additionally, more than half said they wore two thirds of their clothing our less with 17% saying they wore less than 33%. The numbers revealed from our survey showed us that people owned way more clothing than was necessary. We decided that we should help provide a way in our design to help people dispose of these unused clothes without adding to the textile waste problem.
Iterative Design Process and Key Insights
We focused on all six of our tasks when creating our design.
- Keeping track of all a person's clothes in their closet after a new purchase.
- Learning of sustainability issues in Shein.
- Donating clothes that are no longer worn, or rarely worn.
- Maintaining how often a clothing item is worn.
- Walking to the nearest Goodwill and donating clothes.
- Sharing how many clothes someone donated in the past month with friends.
All six tasks were chosen because task 2-6 were connected to our idea of promoting sustainability in textile waste, while task 1 was necessary for the functionality of keeping track of clothes for sustainability awareness. We believe all tasks were necessary for the individual’s benefit when interacting with our design. Some of our tasks closely relate to each other, so we were able to merge them based on patterns we observed from our previous research.
For our first design process, we came up with three designs: a clothes usage/donating tracking
app, a mirror with an attached camera to scan and determine clothing usage, and a magnetic
clip tracker which clips to the clothing pieces and pairs using bluetooth with an app.
We ended up combining the strengths of all three designs into our final design--a mirror with a camera paired with an app. The mirror created a quick way to input outfits worn daily, the first app design had extensive information about clothes usage and donation tracking while the app in the magnet design had helpful location features which assists people in finding
the most convenient donation center to donate clothes to. Combining all three designs creates a
convenient, efficient and informative way to assist users in tracking and bettering their clothing
usage habits.
Ensuring Consistency And Clear Transitions Between App And Mirror
Initially, after clicking the donating button on the mirror, new functions would be available within the app without notifiying the user of the change. After performing our usability tests, our participants noted that this was a bit of a clunky interaction and likely wouldn't have understood it had we not placed the new phone prototype in front of them. Additionally, for a person inexperienced with our design it could be confusing to click the donation button on the mirror with little feedback to confirm to them that the process has begun. To resolve this issue, we made sure to clearly label where the next step would take place and help coach the user along the way through pop-ups and alerts in both the app and the mirror interface. In the end, the transition makes a lot more sense and will be more friendly to people new and expert with the design.
Making clear and easy to follow prompts on the mirror and phone streamlines the design's functionality.
Streamlining Selection Confirmation in Process Flows
In our original design of the donation process, we showed participants a list of recommended items to donate on the app, but didn't allow interaction with clothing during this step. We only had them select the clothing they donated after the fact. This was a poor design choice, as it forced participants to recall specific clothes that they already parted with. Usability testers recommended the ability to select clothes to donate before beginning to navigate to a donation center. They said that this would feel more intuitive and "flow better". We took this feedback into account and implemented the change in our following designs. Now, individuals will choose the items they plan to donate while they're at home and gathering the clothes. Then, after donating, their previous selection will be pre-populated on the confirmation screen. The individual need only recognize that their selection was accurate and confirm to earn points. This is a much more intuitive implementation of confirmation selection.
Before and after refactoring to streamline donation process.
Laying Out Key Functionality For Newcomers
In our initial prototype, there was a points screen when earning points after donating that only displayed the amount of points you just earned. There was no indication of what these points were used for, or where they were meant to be used. One usability tester made a comment on the points screen that they had no idea what the points they just earned were for, which led to our realization that we had a large hole in functionality clarity. We, as the designers, had inadvertently assumed that the purpose of the points was clear. This prompted us to update the points screen with an explanation of the points' purpose. We also added the ability to hide the message, for experienced users who already understand the feature. This same principle was applied to the sticker store on the mirror as well.
Before and after updating points screen to include points explanation message. Stickers explanation is newly added as well.
Resulting Design
Our final design of Dapper Dany is a mirror and phone app combination. The mirror allows for effortless tracking of clothes usage and outfit history. By simply standing in front of it, you will have your clothing choices scanned and analyzed by a camera on the mirror. Information about the sustainability paractices of the brands you wear are easily accessible through the mirror, to encourage informed consumption of clothing. The app will display key metrics like percentage of total clothes worn, as well as highlight your most and least worn items. Both components work together to facilitate the donation of rarely-used clothing items that are taking up space in your closet.
Task 1: Bring awareness to the sustainability of clothing brands in your closet.
When you stand in front of the mirror, it will scan the clothes you're wearing and identify their brands. Buttons with the identified brands will pop up and display a window with information about the brand's sustainability practices. There is also an outfit sustainability scale in the top-left corner that scores the overall sustainability of your outfit.
You can put on clothes in front of the mirror and learn about that brand's sustainability practices.
Task 2: Facilitate the donation of rarely-used and unwanted clothes.
When the mirror detects that you have clothes you haven't worn in a while, it will alert you and direct you to the phone app. Here, you are shown a list of recommended clothing items to donate and prompted to select the ones you plan on donating. Then, the app will assist you in navigating to a nearby donation center of your choice.
After you've donated your items, you will be prompted to confirm the items you've donated. Your previous selection is pre-populated, so you simply have to confirm that everything looks right. Then, you earn points for completing the donation process, which you use to purchase digital stickers on your mirror's store. These stickers are purely aesthetic and can used to spruce up selfies. These serve as rewards and recognition for your sustainability efforts!
The donation process from receiving the notification up to navigating to a donation center and donating.
After donating and confirming your donations, you earn points that can be traded for digital stickers on your mirror.
Cited Sources
Lundberg, Dielle, and Julia Devoy. “The Aftermath of Fast Fashion: How Discarded Clothes Impact Public Health and the Environment.” SPH The Aftermath of Fast Fashion How Discarded Clothes Impact Public Health and the Environment Comments, 22 Sept. 2022, www.bu.edu/sph/news/articles/2022/the-aftermath-of-fast-fashion-how-discarded-clothes-impact-public-health-and-the-environment/.