Presenting fabrics online

Abstract

Online fashion retail gives consumers access to a wide range of garments, but it also removes direct sensory interaction with the fabric. Properties such as thickness, stiffness, smoothness, glossiness, transparency, and colour appearance can be difficult to judge from standard product images alone. This can create a mismatch between the expectation formed online and the experience of the real garment after delivery.

This project investigated how online presentations can better communicate fabric properties, with the aim of helping consumers form more accurate expectations of the real fabric. The project followed an iterative design-research process. First, relevant fabric properties and possible presentation techniques were explored through literature, current retail examples, low-fidelity prototypes. Five directions were then developed into medium-fidelity prototypes: standard photographs, stereoscopic 3D photos, 3D scans, light sweeps, and interaction videos. These were examined in exploratory user tests to understand their perceived strengths, weaknesses, and practical limitations.

The exploratory tests showed that different presentation techniques supported different kinds of fabric judgments. Standard photographs provided a useful baseline impression, but did not communicate every property equally strongly. Interaction videos appeared promising for showing how fabric behaves under manipulation. Depth-based views helped reveal folds, structure and spatial form. Lighting variation could reveal surface, structure, and highlights, but could also make the garment look inconsistent across views.

Based on these insights, the quantitative study focussed on lighting as a more controlled and broadly applicable variable. The study compared garment presentations under diffuse lighting, focus lighting, and both lighting conditions. The results did not show a general improvement in perception accuracy or confidence when multiple lighting conditions were shown. Only colour lightness was significantly affected by lighting condition, with diffuse or combined lighting supporting more accurate judgments than focus lighting alone. Confidence also did not function as a straightforward indicator of accuracy; higher confidence was not associated with more accurate judgments. These results indicate that richer presentation is not automatically better. Additional views are only useful when they provide distinct cues and remain easy to interpret.

The project outcome is a set of design guidelines, illustrated through a product page mockup. The guidelines propose using a clear neutral view as a dependable reference point, adding complementary views only when they reveal distinct fabric cues, keeping comparable views visually consistent, making visual differences explicit, adapting presentation choices to the specific garment and difficult-to-judge properties, using interaction videos and depth-based views as optional support, and evaluating success through accuracy rather than confidence alone. The main contribution of the project is therefore not one superior presentation technique, but a practical framework for selecting and combining visual cues in ways that help consumers form expectations that better match the real fabric.