‘Fashion forward Lily’ is a tabletop game designed to explore what it means to be sustainable in fashion consumption. The game is part of a research project that explores sustainable fashion consumption by gamifying the data collection process.
1 November 2023
The game invites players to role-play a character called Lily as she charts her journey through Instagram wanting to develop her fashion feed. Game prompts spark conversation around sustainable fashion consumption and the complexities embedded within this topic.
Gamification presents an opportunity to improve participant engagement in the research process. Research participants, when immersed in a gamified experience, may express their thoughts and opinions more freely, while also having fun at the same time. The game does not prescribe what is or is not sustainable, rather, it lets the players define what it means to be sustainable- there are no right or wrong answers. Game mechanics like role-playing and storytelling create a playful experience for the participants, and these mechanics also enable players to discuss sustainable fashion consumption without feeling judged for what they have to say. In these ways, the game is open-ended and non-didactic, making it an appropriate research tool to collect thoughts and opinion on the topic.
Using a group-based tabletop game to collect data can be compared to conducting focused group interviews. However, due to the unique affordances that the game presents, the method is also sufficiently different from traditional group interviews.
The game is currently being play tested. For more information email s.dhungel_upadhya@hw.ac.uk.
Fashion Forward Lily is part of a PhD research project being conducted by Samip Dhungel Upadhya, and supervised by Professor Marylyn Carrigan, Dr Lisa Macintyre from Heriot-Watt University and Dr Agnessa Spanellis.