Reducing Finished-Product Waste through Augmented Design Intelligence
Team: Olaitan Adeleke, Heidi Woelfle, Taylor Boothe, Jiaxi Tang, Lucy Dunne (PI)
Program: Wearable Technology Lab
Waste from the fashion industry constitutes an extra burden on a world already grappling with diminishing resources. By our estimation, as much as 97% of all garments produced are wasted. It is likely that a large portion of this waste is driven by misfit between consumer needs and garments produced, a problem that can potentially be effectively addressed by altering current design processes. Improving the consumer/garment match for finished products would also improve the utility value of garments as perceived by consumers.
Our current research investigates the design practices of apparel designers through expert interviews, particularly as regards the use of consumer information in developing design concepts. It also investigates the relationship between user and garment attributes through quantitative assessment of dressing heuristics and through analysis of garment attributes in user wardrobes and purchase preferences for new garments. Toward the goal of augmenting the human intelligence of designers with data-intensive and/or artificially intelligent tools, our team has developed a set of prototype design tool concepts that serve to help designers make evidence-based decisions that account for consumer attributes, thereby creating garments with greater utility value and reducing the waste generated in the process.
Keywords: Usability, Data Visualization, Augmented Intelligence, Interactive Prototyping
Funders: This work was funded by the National Science Foundation under grants #2222903, 2222904, 2222905.
Other Collaborators: Denise Green (Cornell University), Sheng Lu (University of Delaware)
