Waves of Knowing - Y3K Clothing

The Brief:

Waves of Knowing focused on how we as designers can implement behaviour change in real world contexts. The context for this brief involved looking at the causes, effects and consequences of water pollution in Wales, specifically plastic microfibre pollution from household laundry sewage.
With 60% of all clothing worn being composed of synthetic textiles, and 700,000 synthetic fibres released on average in every load of domestic laundry, it is essential that this often overlooked or invisible source of pollution receives the level of care and focus as other areas of fighting water pollution.
This context was our arena for thinking about how design can be used to change behaviour. The brief asked to deliver an affirmative solution and a disruptive deliverable. Affirmative behaviour change might be in the form of policy change, political change, the design of a new service to prevent specific behaviours.
Disruptive design forces people to see things differently or alters existing design systems to enact change in an unorthodox manner. This could be in the form of future design, speculative design or more obstructive design solutions.
For my disruptive design solution, I wanted to analyse the problem of plastic microfibre pollution from an alternative perspective; looking at the over consumption of synthetic textiles and reimangining the effects of maintaining this scale of production and consumption, whilst using a source material which is non-renewable. I also wanted to connect viewers of the solution to the materiality of these synthetic textiles, since it is difficult to determine a synthetic textile from a natural textile without subjecting it to tests.
To achieve these goals, my disruptive solution involved making a yarn out of plastic shopping bags and knitting it into a scarf. I chose to knit a scarf over other garments as I wanted to ensure that anyone could interact with it, and I chose to use plastic shopping bags to both save them from being discarded, as well as taking advantage of the general perception and image of plastic pollution- most peoples minds turn to usable and discarded items rather than microfibres.
My disruptive outcome was highly textures and colourful, so I aimed to balance the chaos of the visuals by maintaining a minimal and clean visual layout, whilst still communicating the fun and playful mood using a bold and bright orange, taken from the object itself, and a rounded, youthful typeface.
In order to foster engagement with the scarf, I developed an accompanying hypothetical brand identity and an interactive key, which provided contextual information on the issue of plastic microfibre pollution.
These additional touch points encourages viewers to further relate to the object as if it were a genuine product, and interact with the key, whilst being exposed to information around the state of microfibre pollution in Welsh waters.
This project culminated with a short exhibition, where both the affirmative and disruptive design solutions were exhibited. This allowed the proposed behaviour change strategies to be tested and viewed by passers by.