The Parallel Processes of Fashion & UX

My design career started in fashion but has evolved to designing digital experiences. I have a formal education in Fashion Design and my career in the industry has included experience working on design teams in addition to creating experiences in stores.

I went in to fashion because I’ve always been inspired by the ways everyday objects had the power to transform how we felt about ourselves. Gradually, I became interested in how technology could be used to solve large scale problems. This led me to pursue a UX Design Immersive program at General Assembly. It was one of the best educational experiences I have ever had and my design toolbox is now brimming with expertise in design processes and methods that assist me in solving real human problems, both in real and digital spaces.

Fashion is an iterative process much like UX Design. There are some variations but the processes are quite parallel.

The Fashion Process

The design cycle in fashion is about 3 months, but varies depending on brand. Product doesn’t reach customers for another 6 to 8 months due to time manufacturing.

The UX Process

The design cycle in UX is 3 weeks to 3 months depending on the size of a project.

Fashion & UX

One main difference between the two processes is the length of the product development cycle, but as you can see their core processes are similar.

• Both require phases of research and inspiration to innovate and drive the industry forward in new and exciting ways.
• Both are iterative processes that require gathering and analyzing success metrics.
• Both require clear cross-functional communication to ensure the creative vision comes to life.

Fashion Design and UX focus on the end use of the product. Is what we are building useful and is it valuable to our customer? As with all good design, the answer to that question relies on creative and iterative problem solving.