Role:
Service Design
Services:
journey mapping, ethnographic research, stakeholder mapping, service blueprint
Context
The Renewal Workshop’s mission was to provide the apparel industry with a completely circular and sustainable solution, and provide customers with a way to become zero waste consumers. As a startup, they were beginning to experience some growing pains: their existing inventory tracking system had become too cumbersome to use as their business grew, requiring manual input at many points in the process, and contained many points where errors or data loss could potentially be introduced. TRW had begun the process of designing and developing a custom inventory tracking system suited to their unique requirements, but first, they needed help documenting existing pain points and visualizing the bigger picture.
Goals
Provide TRW with insights to inform a customized inventory tracking system that would:
Help the company partner with the right software vendor, streamline their production workflow, and ultimately tell their story to partners and investors more effectively
Improve employee efficiency instead of having to find workarounds for a system that isn't built for their needs
Process
Discovery & Research
Collaborative design workshops: With the service designer, I co-facilitated several collaborative design workshops with the TRW team via Zoom and Mural. As team lead, I also served as project coordinator and was the point of contact with TRW founders, key stakeholders, and investors.
Contextual inquiry: In order to fully understand the textile renewal process, we planned a contextual inquiry session at the TRW factory in Cascade Locks, OR. During that session, we observed employees perform their duties at each point of the textile renewal process as they described the pros and cons of the current system. After our factory visit, we conducted several collaborative design sessions with key stakeholders on the TRW team to further identify and prioritize opportunities for improvement.
Stakeholder & Process Mapping
Create a map of the process, data flows, and financial flows in the textile industry
Recommendations
Create RFP using prioritized requirements list
Continue refining process based on priorities we identified during the project
Results
After the conclusion of this 3-month project, TRW continued to grow their business, partnered with brands including The North Face, Adidas, New Balance, Pearl Izumi, Osprey, and Timbuk2, and announced several additional rounds of funding. In March 2022, they were acquired by Bleckmann.
