Communicating circular messages to fashion consumers

Abstract

We aRe Spindye is a company that supplies textiles to fashion brands, with the goal of making the fashion industry circular by providing sustainable textile innovation. As of recently, We aRe Spindye offers textiles to their clients made from chemically recycled polyester which is considered a breakthrough in the pursuit of closing the material loops in the fashion industry. Upscaling the production of chemically recycled polyester is the next step of closing the loop, which requires an increased market demand, which depends on consumers to purchase garments made from chemically recycled polyester, which is why We aRe Spindye wants to communicate the breakthrough to the end consumer. A design project was carried out to design this communication, with the aim of exploring what drivers and barriers impact the communication, how that affects the specific message of chemically recycled polyester, and how user-centered design can contribute to communication in a way that fuels circular values and practices in the end consumer. The design project builds on three studies: the message to be communicated, the end consumer perspective of the issue, and the business perspective of the issue, followed by problem reframing and concept generation. The result includes a written analysis of the three different perspectives, subsequent design guidelines for a communication concept, and a final design concept. It was found that drivers for communication include information that is affirmative of the consumer’s driving forces and needs, good user experience, specific instruction and concrete knowledge. Barriers for communication include ambiguous information, overwhelming amounts of information and distrust in brands. Furthermore, it was found that communication needs to take a mixture of informative and enabling approaches in order for the consumer to be motivated enough to be impacted by the message. It was also found that the message has the best potential to sink in if looked at from several viewpoints, which resulted in the final design of 12 part concepts conveying different messages with different strategies to impact the end consumer