Assignment 5 - Part One.

Over semester two I have been taught to observe closely and to gather information through first hand research. Our first four assignments asked us to look at people, objects and environments and ask why they are as they are as well as how design could improve situations. In semester one I studied sustainable textiles and the current culture of consumerism including the ‘fast fashion’ trend by reading journals and parts of books written about the subject. To research this further I could use some of the primary skills acquired in semester two.

The research I looked at showed that ‘fast fashion’ has become a big problem – people buy lots of cheap items, dispose of them and buy new items at a fast rate. This has lead to a huge increase in textile waste in the past five to ten years, which is bad for our environment. It looked at the nature of shoppers and the lack of information available about the problem. The stigma has been removed from buying clothes from ‘value’ stores and new styles come into the shops every two weeks for people who want new clothes often, so there is a large amount of clothing being thrown away even when it is in good condition.

The next step for me after studying other people’s research about sustainable textiles is to get my own primary research by speaking to members of the public. I could ask about our current consumer culture and look at how we could become more environmentally friendly with our attitudes to shopping and textile waste in the future. I would also like to look at what contributes to the way that we consume in terms of advertising and the media.

To carry out the research I think each of the assignments undertaken in semester two could be useful.

The first and third assignments were about observation of a space. The first one made me look closely at another design students personal possessions and gather information about them based on these items. The other one made me spend time looking at what was going on in a public space in more detail than I normally would and question why certain things were happening. From this I got a lot of notes about how comfortable people were, how people were acting and how effective the layout of the shop was. I think these assignments were meant to make me open my eyes to detail and think like a designer instead of as a consumer. This approach to information gathering would be useful for looking at shopping habits. I could ask clothing shops if I could observe shoppers behaviour and take notes to understand the way in which people shop at the moment. This could help when thinking about how we can change our shopping habits and when thinking of how to sell more sustainable products.

Another of our assignments was about how images can have more than one meaning. It made me think about advertising and how it manipulates people to understand a certain message from a picture. We were told to experiment with a series of random images by firstly getting stories from several people through linking the images then adding text and more images to try and make other people get that story when they looked at them. This could be useful for me in a few ways. By examining fashion magazines, television and internet adverts I could get a better understanding of how these things affect the public’s taste and the way that we buy things by portraying a specific message. This assignment showed me how much power the media gains through using pictures, they could have a big role to play in raising awareness about the sustainability issue.

Our last assignment, interviewing with questions based around one main question, allowed me to experience interviewing someone and showed me the difficulties in being selective and steering a conversation to get the right information to answer specific questions. The topic I chose to interview about was ‘how do people accumulate stuff?’ In this I asked about shopping habits so this information could already be useful. Interviewing members of the public could be the most important part of this research. I would firstly ask about peoples shopping habits at the moment: how often people buy new clothes, if they keep the items for long and how they dispose of their unwanted clothing. Using this method I could also find out more about how much the media effects what people buy and look for links between the magazines people read and how much they know about sustainable textiles.

It would also be useful to find out about different members of the publics current awareness about textile sustainability. I could do this by interviewing a wide variety of people from different age groups. This could help to see what could to be done to raise awareness in some age groups. From the research I studied in semester one it was shown that the problem mainly lies with young consumers who want new outfits regularly.

I think questions about materialism and sentimentality could help to show how people look at their possessions and how meaningful different objects, or items of clothing, are to them to show how disposable people think their clothing is.

I also found in my research in semester one that convenience is key for recycling, I could therefore try to find out what would make people want to recycle their clothing and textiles and how to make this more convenient.

Using the skills learned in semester two to further this research I think I could get quite a lot of information. I feel it would also benefit this research to create a survey to get information on a wider scale. From my previous research I saw that environmental problems have increased in recent years and so has general interest in recycling so it would be helpful to get a survey to see how much the public knows about sustainable textiles compared to other methods of recycling.

Using the skills acquired in the research parts of the semester two assignments as well as by creating a survey I feel I could build up a large amount of first hand research information.