INNOVATE-ED IN ACTION

User Experience (UX) Design is a growing field and was introduced to the Year 7 Innovate-Ed curriculum last year to foster creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving skills.

The Year 7 Innovate-Ed curriculum introduces students to the concepts of user-centred design and design thinking. Last year, a group of students from 7A embraced the challenge of addressing the pressing issue of fast fashion. Designing and developing an application (app) named Bicemart, they sought to increase awareness, reduce fashion waste, and combat global warming. Utilising design thinking tools to come up with a unique solution to the lack of awareness surrounding fast fashion, they encountered various challenges during the development process, but were able to overcome them and create a successful prototype.

Last year we had a great opportunity to expand our knowledge of UX Design in our Innovate-Ed class when with the challenge of constructing an app that helps prevent fast fashion.

Fast fashion is when large corporations recruit lots of poor people from developing countries and make them work long hours in harmful working conditions while being paid less than the minimum wage. Companies then discard thousands of clothes which end up in landfill, contributing to global warming. Many people are unaware where and how their clothes are manufactured and that is where we thought we could help.

We named the prototype app that our group designed Bicemart. It is aimed at fixing some of the problems surrounding fast fashion and helping you make smart buying decisions. The problems we decided to solve surrounding fast fashion are lack of awareness, fashion waste and global warming.

Our app offers three main features: shop, scan and donate. The shop function lets you buy clothes that either the company is going to discard or buy clothes that people have donated and are in good condition. The scan function lets you scan a clothing tag which will tell you where it was made, how much the workers were paid, and the average pay in that city or country.

The donate function lets you donate clothes, which will be added to our online store, or donate money, which will go to Remake (remake.world/). Remake is a charity that pays workers in fast fashion factories fair pay. Other functions our app include are tracking orders, help and support, notifications, log in and sign up.

Making the app look realistic, and flow smoothly was challenging. It was difficult to move between the functions as there were so many pages that connected to one another. It sometimes got confusing and messy, and we were directed to the incorrect page. Our solution was to take one step at a time –sometimes less is more. Once our payment methods were successful, we were able to create multiple payment methods. We spent a lot of time perfecting the login and scan functions until our app looked real and performed well. This Innovate-ED project was a lot of fun. We learned a lot about the fast fashion industry, and we had a lot of fun prototyping our app.

Evie Talbot, Brigitte Gannon, Clara Papamarkou, Isabelle Nelson and Chloe Clyde Year 7 students (2022)