UX research: Sewing as a hobby
University Capstone project
Role
UX Research
UX Design
Timeline
Nov 2024 - Jan 2025
Tasks
User research
Research analysis
Interaction design
Tools
Figma
Figjam
I started learning to sew in 2022, after a long time considering it. I taught myself via countless YouTube videos and blog posts, and it quickly became a hobby I truly enjoy. Not only do I get to learn practical and cognitive skills, I’m always proud to create cool things by hand.
Sewing has made me highly appreciative of the amount of effort, skills, and time required to make handmade items. Most of all, sewing and UX combine my love for problem solving.
The project
Evaluating the experiences of people who sew as a hobby
For my Masters Capstone project at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington, I focused on qualitative user research.
I first conducted user interviews to understand the gather data on the experiences of local sewists in NZ who sew as a hobby, and to identify their needs in this space.
This research then informed the second part of the project, to create concepts for a digital product. I chose to design a mobile app which serves as a resource for people to access at the beginning of their sewing journey, as this was something I wished I had as a self-taught sewist.
How might we support people who want to learn to sew, and keep motivating those who are already in the hobby?
The research
Uncovering problem spaces for hobby sewists
I interviewed 12 participants based in NZ, with a range of skill-levels from beginner to highly experienced.
Can you walk me through what you did to start learning?
What do you enjoy most about sewing, now that you’ve got some experience?
Tell me about a time where your sewing project didn’t go as planned.
How do you organise your sewing materials?
Can you walk me through how you improve your sewing skills?
What do you consider when buying readymade items from a shop?
Having easy access to quality information is important when starting out and upskilling.
Sewists tend to use any resources available to them, however limited, when learning to sew and upskilling. Many use the internet for sewing resources, but it wasn't available to most people interviewed when they started sewing, so books and sewing lessons were more popular.
On living in Whangarei when they were younger and learning to sew:
The resources that you wanted just wasn’t there. You would just have to ask the people in the store, but then you can only take up 5-10 minutes of their time.
Participant D
Cost investment and access to materials to start and maintain the hobby can be prohibitive.
After the initial investments in a machine and essential tools, sewists tend to collect materials like fabric and notions through opshops, re-using bedding or curtains, or stocking up during sales. Some sewists find it hard to source sewing materials in proximity of where they live and might travel to other places as they prefer to buy fabrics in-person.
One thing that frustrates me about sewing is the lack of materials in New Zealand. I think it’s getting better, but there still aren’t a lot of things we aren’t able to find easily here.
Participant C
The quality of sewing projects is not only determined by skill, but also how pragmatic sewists are in the entire sewing process.
Sewing involves trial and error, so choosing projects suited to one’s skill level and appropriate materials are important. Mistakes often happen when projects are too ambitious or rushed through, but sewists learn to persevere. Preferences for projects, techniques, and materials are developed with experience.
You have to understand your own body shapes. Sometimes you look at inspirational pictures and of course you're never going to look good in something like that, so you have to choose the right project to be working on.
Participant I
Having enough space and diligent organisation of materials motivates sewing.
Most sewists have a dedicated space for their hobby, while others will use spaces in their home. It’s important to be able to view and access materials easily, to not only motivate to sew but encourage using their stash. Some participants wish to have a space where they can do other hobbies alongside sewing.
You need to be able to set up and leave all your stuff out and about in the room, you know. You shouldn’t need to pack up every night to cook tea or do something else.
Participant G
Snippet of Capstone research report.
Design principles
Actionable mandates for any future design work
Design concepts
Designing a mobile app to support sewists
Based on the research insights, I designed an app where beginners can learn about the many aspects of the sewing process, as well as tools and materials. The goal of the app is to provide free learning information about sewing that can be viewed in a centralised place, and referred back to as needed while upskilling.
More research
Testing the prototypes for usability and comprehension of information
I prototyped a subset of flows for the app idea, and conducted usability testing to analyse comprehension levels with the information being presented and the ability to complete tasks in the app. I recruited a small sample of people who are aspiring to sew, or never sewed before.
Majority of participants found that content on the prototyped flows were easy to understand, and testing primarily outlined some usability issues. In particular, around the feature to add items to a custom list ,e.g. for shopping, where people confused it with the bookmark feature and found that the icons to add and remove items didn’t match their mental model.
The app is outlining the fundamentals of what you’re doing when you’re sewing to get started. Goes through all the things you might need as a complete beginner.
Participant D
The fact that the Marking tool introductions are before you get down to the specifics, if you didn’t have those there, it might be too dense for a beginner.
Participant B
The fun part
Refining the final prototypes for Pocket Sew
Based on research findings, I refined the prototypes to include usability improvements, removed the "Add to list" feature that caused confusion due to similarities with the bookmark feature, and added illustrations for more visual interest.
Reflection
12 stories, one shared passion in sewing
Choosing sewing as the topic for my Capstone made it an interesting project to do outside of my full-time work as a Product Owner at the time. Doing a relatively large number of user interviews for a uni project pushed me outside of my comfort zone, but all the sewists I spoke to were very generous with sharing their time and stories. I wanted to focus my Capstone on developing skills on planning, conducting, and analysing UX research. Especially to build confidence with doing semi-structured interviews, which allowed me to take these skills into my first professional UX role.