Designing Digital Fashion Technology: Embedding User Requirements to Support Accessible Innovation for Net Zero Transitions

The Fashion and Textile Industry faces rising economic and environmental challenges as it adopts net zero practices. To support transitions to net zero digital fashion technologies are being developed by third parties to provide supply chain innovations across design and manufacture. However, these technologies are often inaccessible or unusable due to their financial cost as well as operational complexity to the Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises which make up most of the United Kingdom’s Fashion and Textile Industry. The paper presents a user centered process to the ideation and development of a digital 3D fashion tool. Exploring how the incorporation of creative end user requirements can inform the development of more accessible and usable innovation. The user centered process developed within the Future Fashion Factory Digitoile.3D project is reflected on. Insights are then used to inform a discussion around how the incorporation of creative end user requirements, within the development of digital fashion technologies could enhance the practical impact, as well as wider adoption of digital innovations across the sector. The research finds that through the development of interconnected knowledge systems, creative users in the United Kingdom Fashion and Textile Industry were able to co-create a usable and accessible digital fashion technology to support the sector’s transition to net zero practices.