Week 2: Team ideation and research

UXD730

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My team and I have been organising ourselves to prepare for the project. This includes deciding our weekly meet-ups and scheduling supervision meetings with our supervisor.

I created a Gantt chart for the project and presented it to the team, who were happy with the plan. Some suggested adding each member’s initials to each task so everyone knows the tasks they need to do. Using it as a point of reference when writing the report at the end is also helpful. Each team member added their findings and references to the Figma Jam, explained what we found, and commented on other members’ findings.

Figure 1: Gantt chart

Research

Some of my findings involved the topic of education in sustainability and recycling. Studies and other sources revealed people, particularly young adults, had a significant interest in sustainability. Many people recycle, and the percentage is relatively low, but the main issue was getting people to buy second-hand clothes/products.

“We first identify four advantages of teaching topics on sustainability management using mobile apps: (1) illustration of the tri-dimensionality of corporate sustainability, (2) realworld learning opportunities, (3) passion for sustainability, and (4) encouragement for action” (Montiel et al. 2017: 7). Research shows that education in sustainability has many benefits, but there is not enough data to show and let people understand the impact of being sustainable.

“What our data shows is that if people better understood how their actions hurt or helped the planet, they would be more likely to make environmentally conscious decisions,” Shumpert said (Brands 2018). This topic also touches upon another subject of awareness in sustainability. This led to a common research topic of consumer behaviour being discussed. It is one thing to be educated about sustainability, but the other is to be motivated to act and be sustainable. Interesting questions arose, such as what drives people to be sustainable? What makes us sustainable?

We also highlighted companies incorporating sustainable features/products, such as H&M Conscious and GymShark. They incentivised consumers to be sustainable by allowing them to return old clothing in exchange for rewards and vouchers for their next purchase.

After discussing the findings, we agreed that more research was needed to understand the potential problem statement. The team decided on an initial hypothesis:

'We believe that consumers lack education on sustainability when purchasing goods, this leads to fast fashion increasing and more purchases being made due to quality of products typically being inferior.'

'People are willing to pay more for products they know are made ethically.'

We split the team, so Jake and Alex will conduct user interviews. Whilst Alaa and I will form together to create questions for the survey. In the next meeting with our supervisor, we will share our results and discuss this in an affinity map.

Reflection

The team's ideas and thoughts have been shared well. Although I feel there is a slight struggle in narrowing down the research, which may lead to slow progress. All team members should continue researching and looking into the market gaps, which may reveal potential new ideas and developments. In previous projects, I have set my mind on creating an app product as my final artefact, so I always had an idea of where to direct my research. However, our approach to this project is different because we want to find a real-life problem statement and later decide on the product format as we progress later in the sprints. I think this is an exciting way of formating the project, and I am interested to see the artefact we form.

References

BRANDS, Sustainable. 2018. ‘New Report Reveals a Gap in the Clothing Reuse Loop’. Sustainable Brands [online]. Available at: https://sustainablebrands.com/read/waste-not/new-report-reveals-a-gap-in-the-clothing-reuse-loop [accessed 7 Jun 2022].

MONTIEL, I., J. DELGADO-CEBALLOS and N. ORTIZ-DE-MANDOJANA. 2017. ‘Mobile Apps for Sustainability Management Education: The Example of GoodGuide, (http://www.goodguide.com/about/mobile)’. Academy of Management Learning & Education 16(3), 488–90.