REUSE & REIMAGINE WITH
FABRICADDICTS.
PROJECT FOCUS
User Experience // Prototyping // User Research
Encouraging sustainable fashion and empowering women in leadership positions. FabricAddicts aims to expand options for starting designers and support recycling of deadstock fabric from established brands.
Mockup from Freepik
ROLE
Co-founder & Lead UX Designer
TIMELINE
2 weeks
RESPONSIBILITIES
User Research
Ideation
Prototyping
UX/UI Design
Presentation
Graphic Design
Overview
FabricAddicts is a mobile application that improves sustainability in fashion and services up and coming designers. As a business focused on connecting fashion designers with affordable materials, FabricAddicts needed an app to bridge the gap between larger brands and starting designers, ultimately leading to circularity and less waste in the fashion industry. My goal was to create an accessible user flow that would streamline the buying process for early designers, allowing them to easily navigate and find the materials that they needed through our platform.
As one of the co-founders and lead UX designer for FabricAddicts, I led the ideation and concept for the app’s functionalities, building from an idea to a detailed business plan. After conducting market research, I created a design system and branding along with designing user flows and high-fidelity interactive prototypes.
This was a project completed under the UNESCO x Christian Dior Women@Dior program (2023-24 Cohort). FabricAddicts was awarded Top 20 Finalist amongst 250+ mentees’ projects.
Final Solution
A mobile app that simplifies acquiring materials for early fashion designers, creating a comfortable format to discover new content and efficiently complete actions.
Compiles information in one place, helping users to quickly understand their options to support their business.
Easy customizability to offer a platform tailored to the user’s individual needs.
Presentation
Summary
We summarized our business plan, which included my mockup designs, to illustrate the impact of FabricAddicts on the fashion industry. This presentation was presented to the jury for UNESCO x Women@Dior’s Dream for Change Project 2023-24, receiving the honor of Top 20 Finalist.
Reflection
What Did I Learn?
As my first exploration in entrepreneurship, I saw how impactful it could be to discover a novel solution to a group’s needs and pain points. Although I led more in the technological aspects of the app’s design, I was able to be involved more directly in seeing how the app could contribute to the business structure of FabricAddicts. This illustrated to me how interconnected a business is to its platform.
Because this project started from just an idea, I realized the challenge of focusing functionalities for our app platform and understanding the user’s most important needs. While including many ideas could broaden the user’s experience, I recognized how centering down to service our user’s main need for finding affordable materials local to them would be more beneficial, providing a tangible solution to their urgent lacking in materials.
Areas of Improvement
With an increased timeline for this project, I would have wanted to further research my users, allowing them to undergo usability testing to refine the prototypes. More functions and screens could be developed to enrich the user flow and showcase the full uses of FabricAddicts. I would create more detailed user personas and journey maps to better illustrate the user experience, giving FabricAddicts the next step in its development. While my prototype largely centered around the buyers/designers’ experience, I would have also liked to prototype the experience for the sellers/brands who would be posting their deadstock materials for sale on the app platform. Finally, a possible exploration would be to offer FabricAddicts as a web application in order to increase accessibility for users.