Educating Consumers About Fair Trade in the Textile Industry: Adobe/Patagonia Creative Jam Entry
Goal
The goal of the project was to create a prototype in response to the Adobe/Patagonia Creative jam brief, “... Design a third-party mobile app that informs a consumer segment about brands who support living wages directly benefiting workers and their families. The solution must create a way to view measurable impact and/or progress.”
Our mission was to help consumers support brands that prioritize fair trade and sustainable wages.
Outcome
We used Adobe XD to create a prototype that allow consumers to learn about fair trade, view products from appropriate brands, search brands for a fair trade rating based on a designed ranking system, and devise a list of favorite brands to support.
Results
No usability testing conducted due to the limited time provided in the competition. Our persona was designed based on our shared experiences and talking to peers.
Responsibilities
Esha Fateh: User Experience Design, UX Writing
Aileen Choi: User Interface Design
Details
We were granted a week to complete the challenge. To start, we identified a persona and drafted panel sketches on paper. Our target audience for the app is composed of employed young adults in their mid twenties who have graduated college and thus have the means to buy clothes, but they have spending limits due to loan repayments. We identified that members of this cohort would like to purchase items at a reasonable price and would be willing to learn about brands that exemplify free-trade principles. We also noted that the target audience may not necessarily know what fair-trade is, so we decided to create an educational feature that provides information in concise wording to hold the viewers’ attention. Recognizing that the target audience prefers a minimalist design without too much content, we organized the educational content into “story” features that allow users to click through a series of panels at their preferred reading speed.
The prototype was constructed in Adobe XD by a team of two with more authority given to the User Interface Designer. The UI Designer designed the story feature, brand scrolling list, and the fair trade ranking system. The User Experience Designer selected color schemes, wrote educational content in an engaging manner, and wrote a brief summary to explain the features of the project.
The name of the app, FairFits, was composed by combining “fair trade” with “outfits.” We did this with the goal of creating a catchy name that is also short, memorable, and reminds users that the goal of the app is to support fair trade practices in the clothing industry. The colors selected were based on standard color theory to create a soothing environment that uses white space to help users concentrate their attention to the essential information provided. The scrolling feature was added for this reason to prevent an overwhelming experience for the user. For ease of access to color-blind users, we avoided color combinations that would be hard to differentiate. For users that may suffer from limited attention spans, we ensured that the educational content is succinct while also allowing users to click through the information at their own pace to accommodate for different reading speeds. We also incorporated images with the brands to improve recognition if a user is unfamiliar with a certain brand name.
We planned to include animations to encourage engagement but decided to abandon the idea due to time constraints. Our goal was to first educate the user and streamline the brand information, so we accommodated more time for those areas.
