CONVERTIBLE CLOTHING

OVERVIEW

Design project aimed at creating temporary solutions to homeleness, addresssing the needs specific to the homeless community in Providence, Rhode Island.

This was a design proposal I pitched to my engineering class and then led a team of 5 others that were interested and shared the same objective to help our local community.

ROLE

Product Designer

User Research, Visual Design, Prototyping, Testing, Pitching

December ‘20 - June ‘21

BACKGROUND

Homelessness is a systemic problem that is often ignored and perpetuated, due to a lack of resources, empathy, and proliferation of anti-homeless strategies.

For my engineering CAPSTONE, I pitched and executed a design project to address this issue, specifically centering the needs of the homeless community within Providence, Rhode Island.

After extensive user interviews and research, the most highly emphasized needs were security, warmth, and portability. My team and I decided to explore the practicality of convertible-clothing, in addition to LGBTQ+ centered distribution and affordable production cost.

UNDERSTANDING THE PROBLEM

Before we started defining our solution, we conducted a series of workshops and user interviews to define the pain points of our homeless community. These were guided by questions aimed to understand the user’s needs.

1. What prevents homeless people from utilizing shelters in our community?

2. What would address the immediate issues of homeless people specific to our city?

3. What product would effectively address the immediate issues of a homeless person?

With these questions in mind, we spoke directly with homeless people in our communities, as well as visited 8 different homeless shelters to speak directly with our potential users. The following was revealed in response to our inquiries:

  • Individuals felt shelters are unsafe, unsanitary, and difficult to access. This leads to many selecting instead to sleep outside.

  • Individuals expressed the ability to sleep outside comfortably and safely was an immediate need.

  • Individuals also valued a product that would not inhibit their mobility.

PRODUCT VISION

After our user interviews and research, we came to the conclusion that providing homeless individuals an alternative to homeless shelters and enabling them to sleep/live comfortably was of the utmost importance. Thus, we decided to design a portable shelter. We used precedent work of portable housing designs to guide our decisions. We evaluated their strengths and weakness.

We found the trend of positives for many portable housing designs to be:

  • Quality of material: It must keep the individual comfortable in every season.

  • Portability: The product must be able to be easily carried or stored.

  • Privacy: The structural design of the product is important to ensure individuals feel an element of safety.

The weaknesses we saw were the following:

  • Expensive materials: Choosing material that is too pricey makes production and distribution of the product difficult.

  • Bulky designs: Many of the designs relied on complicated structure and layering that could affect mobility.

APPLIED METHODOLOGY

SELECTION OF APPROACH

Our design decisions and approach were heavily influenced by direct user feedback, contact with a variety of organizations, and constructive criticism from our critical design reviews. Because homelessness encapsulates a wide range of systemic issues, it was important for us to be specific about what problems we wanted to solve. We approached this practically by taking inspiration from pre-existing solutions, as well as repurposing materials, from fabrics to sewing templates. This reuse of resources is also economically sound and allowed us more flexibility for experimentation.

APPLICATION OF SELECTED APPROACH

In our first approach of prototyping our design, we aimed to focus on warmth and portability by creating a sleeping bag skirt attachment. This attachment served to give the user a portable cushion between their body and the ground when sitting or sleeping. By not being in direct contact with the ground, the user would be able to retain body heat. Additionally, the skirt would be worn whilst moving in two ways: as an open skirt that could adjust to the user’s height, or closed and secured to the back of the jacket.

This gave the user added protection from the elements if worn as a skirt, while also providing adaptability based on situation and user needs. By utilizing an existing jacket for this prototype, we began our exploration of affordability in our design.

We experimented with the possibility of the final design being a skirt attachment that could be added to any existing jacket, making the product financially viable and physically accessible.

DESIGNS

PROTOTYPE 1

The initial design of our first prototype started by trying to create the most ideal product. Essentially, we wanted to see how far the design could go in theory, by trying to address all of the needs of homeless individuals that had been documented through research and user feedback. We then planned to simplify the design by breaking down what was important, necessary, and feasible.

The main elements of our design were based upon a repurposed jacket that would be built upon. The primary components included a balaclava design for added warmth and safety from Covid-19. It also incorporated a detachable hood for seasonal wear and built-in gloves for warmth. These elements are represented in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Sketch of Prototype 1 Design

After presenting our critical design review for the first prototype, the main feedback we received was to narrow our focus, to not prioritize materials, and to begin the project even without the total amount of desired user feedback we hoped to receive. We shifted our design based on this response.

The key design elements of our revised Prototype I design included modification of an existing jacket, an adjustable skirt that converts into a sleeping bag, velcro attachments and closures, drawstrings to adjust skirt length, and gloves attached to the sleeves. We managed to implement all of these elements in our first prototype, which is seen in Figure 2. 

MATERIAL INVESTIGATION

Following the first review of our design, we were given several main ideas to work off of: we needed to simplify our design, focus on specific needs to solve, and make sure our material selections reflected these focuses.

We aimed to see how our design could prevent hypothermia without upping the cost by using recycled materials. To reach this aim, we needed to have at least one layer of waterproof material to protect from the elements. We concluded that the outer layer of the jacket needed to either be made of an existing waterproof material (used tents, sleeping bags, jackets), or another material made to be waterproof using waterproof fabric spray.

We explored the general shapes necessary to make a jacket, as well as creating a sample of sandwiched materials that could be utilized in our next prototype.

Figure 3 demonstrates the former; here, we re-used the existing jacket’s lining for the inner shell, and fabricated the structure of the jacket with fabric scraps using our own sewing pattern.

Figure 2: Prototype 1 Physical Design Iteration

Inner Lining & Sleeve Lining

Outer Lining

Sewing Template / Outline

Figure 3: Material Investigation Iteration Details

Figure 4 is the material demonstration of how recycled materials could be utilized in our final design. Here, we have an outer layer of recycled vinyl composite, an inner layer of basic recycled cotton, and an insulation layer of recycled fleece. In addition, to create the “puffiness” of a winter coat, we inserted fabric scraps in between each layer. 

Figure 4: Materials Study Iteration Details

We also altered Prototype I to incorporate different layers of insulation. We attached the fabric lining pictured in Figure 3 using velcro at several points. Having the detachable lining within the repurposed jacket shell enabled us to insulate the jacket with a variety of materials. A foam insulation layer was used during this experimental phase. The jacket with the fabric lining and foam insulation layer is shown in Figure 5. 

Figure 5: This series of images shows how the foam insulation layer was seamlessly incorporated between the jacket shell and the fabric lining. This foam layer provides insulation and adds comfort should the user lay down on their back. Still, the jacket would blend in with other jackets on the street, offering the user anonymity and safety through urban camouflage.

EXPERIMENTAL

In order to test the feasibility of the materials we chose for our design, we conducted a heat-loss test. To do this, we used two Nalgene water bottles filled with warm water, a thermometer, and our most recent prototype to measure the heat loss difference between the bottle with no wrapping and the bottle wrapped in the jacket.

Our experimental investigation showed us that our prototype was, in fact, effective in insulating the water bottle initially filled with water close to human body temperature. Our experimental approach did, however, have a few weaknesses. Each time the temperature was recorded, each bottle was opened, releasing heat to the atmosphere. Additionally, the insulated bottle had to be removed from the jacket for every measurement. Had these disruptions not occurred, the recorded temperatures of both bottles likely would have been higher.

Additionally, the water bottle is far from a perfect model of the human body. One of the largest differences is the way the human body generates heat, while a water bottle obviously does not. So, while the jacket prototype did not keep the water temperature close to human body temperature for the two-hour monitoring period, a real human body would generate additional heat. Thus, the heat loss over time would be less significant. 

CHALLENGES & COMPROMISES

Unfortunately, time constraints did not allow us to complete a second prototype. This significantly contributed to our main design weaknesses, due to the fact that we were unable to make a second prototype with extensive user testing to validate our design. Another limitation was constraints on the amount of user feedback we were able to collect, which was not optimal. If we were to do an additional iteration, we would improve our design by ensuring that it had the following elements: 

  • Be a functional, works-like, size-inclusive prototype 

  • Combine the successes of Prototype I and Material Investigation 

  • Have extensive user feedback & demonstrated use of prototype 

  • Have extensive user testing individually with new iteration and original iteration.

We would also further validate our prototype by having someone on the team sleep in it for a night or find someone who has experienced homelessness provide us with their insights in order to validate whether our design accomplishes the basic goals that have been defined. A general form of what this second iteration would like can be found in Figure 6. 

Figure 6: Sketch of Prototype II design. With additional time to create another prototype that combines the findings of Prototype I and the Material Investigations, this is a representation of what would strive to accomplish, in terms of the overall form. 

RESULTS & TAKEAWAYS

This experimentation gave us space to understand how we would want this project to expand beyond just this semester’s work. In the near future, we aim for this prototype to become more finalized, with an instruction manual of how to replicate the design in a cost-friendly and skill-accessible manner.

Further down the line, with the ideology that this becomes a full-fledged product, we would want to hire employees who have lived experiences with homelessness, addiction, and/or incarceration. We believe that a vital part of the design process is including the population you’re designing around. Furthermore, when dealing with a vulnerable and oftentimes forgotten population in our design, it is important that we give back to the community and allow for the space for success that they are normally not given access to.

This practice is utilized in other initiatives we looked at in our research, including the Pallet Shelter and Shower to Empower. Additionally since the city of Providence has funds in the Emergency Shelter Grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, we could potentially work with the local government to make this idea a reality.

All of this will require more brainpower than just the three of us, so we hope to work with the next semester’s students of ENGN 1000 to recruit passionate students to help continue this work.