Emotion

This project is a failure story incorporating the theme of emotion. Through this project, we learned that the emotion of confidence could be triggered by internal and external factors. This is a group project in which I have worked with Mae Sang and Lookkaeo Bhandita from Thailand. Following is the process of our project using Human-Centered Design.

Inspiration

During the inspiration stage, we came together, shared our experience and thoughts about emotion and decided on the topic related to dressing. As we thought of making a dress, our conversations were very focused on the wrap dress and its pros and cons. Further, we researched and talked with people about their experience with wrap dresses and what would be their suggestions to improve the dress.

Source: Google

Users:

People who want to wear dresses but do not like the cons of wearing a dress
People who work or study but still want to look trendy (for example people who work in an art field requires a lot of movement while working)
People who want to look ladylike/cute/confident/comfortable
People who do not want to wear pants/jeans/shorts

Insights:

Allow different sizes
- Not restrictive
- Availability ***
- Price **
- Pattern *
- Variety

Thickness is not much of the problem but rather if the cloth is too sheer
- Most sheer dresses do not have a second layer
Most wrap dresses will always have a problem with tying it
- Too tight or too loose
Buying in department malls and market
- Price
- Quality
- Comfort
Functional: arms long sleeve and short sleeve
- Culture
- Personal preference

Where we want to make an impact

Confidence of the users
- Comfort
- Design
- Functionality
- fashion
Social Norms
- Try to point out to society that wrap dresses aren’t that bad → increase the availability

Ideation

During this phase based on the feedback, we sketched the dress for convenience, confidence, and comfort. However, we realized soon that we are skipping the process and jumping to the solution. That was the peak time when we as a team decided to step back and explore the theme rather than bringing the solution to solve the issue.

Credit: Lookkaeo Bhandita

We talked with our stakeholders and users again and decided to focus on the emotion of confidence related to dressing up. Our target group included the elderly from Thailand. We chose them as we observed that Thailand is an open, yet traditional society and the elderly have a huge role in terms of commenting and controlling the dressing habits of youth in society. I have to say that it is somewhat an Asian trait as similar in Pakistan where aunties one of the favorites tasks is to complement dressing that often impacts the confidence of young girls especially. For example, one of the interviewees shared the story that she was dressed up for marriage and someone tells her that she looks horrible in that outfit and it doesn’t suit her body. Her confidence that night got devastated, she couldn’t stay in the marriage hall afterward. As a group, we reflected on imposing of tastes and definitions of one’s own preference on others. Some of the other major insights included the external factors that can impact confidence such as remarks, comments, social norms, and the environment as well as internal factors such as believes and self-perception about the perceived image of self.

Credit: Mae Sang

Prototype

To explore it further during a limited time, we decided to trigger the emotion and decided to work within our team instead of being able to co-create with our users which is a central feature of Human-Cantered Design. That is one of the main reasons that we title it as our failure story along with other reasons. I was decided to be the subject, the main character, who was triggered. We planned the storyline, and we decided on an experiment in which I wore a normal and unusual dress in the classroom and an outdoor setting. Then we analyzed the feeling and reflected upon the experience majorly focusing on the emotion of confidence.

As we did the experiment triggering the emotion, my team recorded me in different situations with normal dressing and unusual dressing (Pakistani traditional dress). Later, they asked me to reflect on my feelings in different situations about confidence and how it was impacted by internal vs external factors. It was a fun and tricky emotional experience that created mixed feelings of nervousness, self-consciousness and rekindle my connection with Pakistan and my culture.

Core Challenge

If we could have more time, we would like to co-create the video experience with our users.