#FASHIONISME

Abstract

This graduation project starts from the big scope of weight stigmatisation on social media. At the beginning of research, primary research about weight stigma and social media was conducted to collect background knowledge and form an initial scope for further exploration. Explorative research was conducted to map out the situation and problems of weight stigmatisation on social media. Then the project scope was refined as weight stigma internalisation in the context of fast fashion, and focuses on the problem that female social media users internalise weight stigma when shopping for fast fashion products. In the next step, I did user research to better understand how do social media influence people in their daily life, and how do people cope with stigmatising information. Then I did context research to understand the collaboration of social media and fast fashion (social shopping), and the internalising circle of weight stigma was concluded from the research. Based on the research findings about social media and fast fashion, this design should enable young social media female users to be aware of the subtle but prevalent stigmatising contents, and therefore avoid internalising stigma, in which way a more supportive environment could be built for more people.
With clear design goal and qualities defined, the design starts with making use of the relevant elements in the whole shopping experience, including online interactions and in-store experience. The concept is developed through user- participatory iterations and evaluations. The final concept is a trans-media experience aiming to make the user encourage them to embrace the body shape diversity actively, and aware of the stigmatising environment on social media.
Finally the evaluation was conducted to validate if the concept fulfilled the design goal and reach the interaction qualities. A workable prototype and video were used to facilitate the evaluation online and offline.