Fiber Filter

The Product

User Research

This summer, the Fiber Filter team participated in the Georgetown Entrepreneurship Initiative's Summer Launch Program. This program devotes a majority of the time to extensive user research and with guidance from the Summer Launch Program's advisors, Fiber Filter began testing different product messaging to shape the bag's design. The central question the team sought to resolve was whether consumers would be more inclined to purchase a bag that was presented as an environmental solution or a solution to stop clothes piling in a wash cycle. The bag testing process was centered around microfiber capture rate, thus geared toward the efficacy of our bag in serving as a solution to an environmental problem. However, the technology appeared to serve the garments industry because the Fiber Filter bag would prevent micro-tears by decreasing friction between synthetic clothing (ex. athletic wear) and other garments. While the eco-friendly consumer market is rapidly expanding as people become more accustomed to changing their consumer decisions to preserve the environment, it is still difficult to convince consumers to invest in products for the sole purpose of preserving the environment. Thus, our mentors argued we should test whether presenting the Fiber Filter as a garment bag with ecological benefits would be more persuasive to potential customers. 

After an array of user interviews, laundry habit surveys and customer pain-point surveys, the team decided to focus on branding Fiber Filter as an ecological solution. In a survey completed by 200 people, only 9.7% of the participants regularly used a garment bag. After user interviews when our data could reflect more wholistic feedback of our customer's preference ordering, the vast majority believed that they were more likely to buy a product that protected the environment than protected their clothing. After extensive deliberations, we decided to move forward with the framing of our product as an environmental solution. This was both motivated by user research, our doubt in the performance of the Fiber Filter as a garments bag and our own personal mission to decrease microfiber pollution. While many companies are able to market to consumers as household solutions that have a added eco-friendly benefit, the efficacy of the Fiber Filter is contingent on proper usage of the bag. For example, we feared that if branded as a garments bag, users would solely include their perishable garments and not other synthetic micro-fiber producing materials.  

Goals

This user research solidified the direction of the company and created a need for a website experience that properly educated consumers about the problem of micro-fibers (an environmental issue that many people are unaware about) and created a call to action for consumers to be a part of the solution by utilizing our future product. Moreover, my timeline for the website launch was accelerated by the impending release of the Von Wong video that highlighted Fiber Filter. Von Wong is a viral photographer who collaborated with the Fiber Filter team in the Spring of 2017 to create a campaign demanding action from laundry companies to take steps to prevent microfiber pollution. The release of the video was the primary motivator for the complete redesign of the Fiber Filter website and thus greatly impacted the goals of the new Fiber Filter website user experience. The three primary objectives are outlined below. 

• Educating consumers about the issue of micro-fiber pollution

Because Fiber Filter's mission is to fight microfiber pollution in our oceans, a central focus of the organization is to bring this underrepresented environmental issue to light. I decided to focus on education as a primary outcome of the Fiber Filter website because we are still prototyping the Fiber Filter bag and thus, we wanted to provide a more comprehensive purpose to the website than solely functioning as a vendor for the Fiber Filter bag. Moreover, after our deliberations about the Fiber Filter brand (explored above in the user research section), we decided to reframe our theory of change to extend much further than the laundry bag. As shown by the Von Wong video, Fiber Filter's goal is to actually promote laundry machine manufacturers to research a better solution that can be implemented on a mass scale and fundamentally change the washing machine market. The Fiber Filter bag is solely a step in the right direction-- it is not the best way to uphold our mission. Thus, the website needed to provide an interactive experience that focused more about educating site visitors about the severity of the issue of micro-fiber pollution to build a consumer base ready to demand action. 

• Building a compelling narrative about why consumers should take action

Conveying this new theory of change relies on persuading the consumer to explore current solutions existing in the market to decrease an individual's micro-fiber waste end up in the ocean. We believe that the poor representation of micro-fiber in the media has resulted in a lack of concern over the issue. Because of this, we wanted to serve as a hub of information surrounding the issue, both featuring relevant articles by major news organizations, as well as, highlighting activists operating in the space. Moreover, we wanted to build upon our brand as college students passionate about the issue to compel website visitors to join the movement. The Ben Von Wong video specifically highlights the Fiber Filter team because of the "underdog story" created by a group of students stepping up, when larger organizations (such as GE) fail to intervene. Thus, our team also decided to write articles exploring the problem. 

• Creating a direct call to action for our consumers who wish to get involved in the movement

Lastly, we wanted the website to cleanly demonstrate the existing market solutions to the issue of micro-fiber pollution. The delays in our bag prototyping process is largely due to the emergence of a new company that recently brought a similar product to market. Our team wrestled with the idea of featuring them in our description of ways to take action and eventually decided to mention them in our website because we believed that by directing consumers to their product, we would better fulfill our mission of decreasing micro-fiber pollution. As we try to navigate the product development process, we hope the website serves as a comprehensive resource for consumers trying to decrease pollutants flowing from their washing machines. 

Conclusion

My final user flow was largely inspired by the three objectives outlined above, working in succession to uphold our mission. In the mockup below, I explored a user experience geared towards creating a call to action.