BestBefore – Design of Experiment & Longevity

Two weeks have now passed since embarking on the field study, and a lot of knowledge and insights has been gained in the process. Initially when trying to decide on a type of field study, I thought I would do a normal internship with a company, but after a lot of thought and consideration, going back and forth between the different types. I decided that a research assistant internship could provide me with new challenges and new insights. As I have previously done a few company internships before, I thought it could be interesting to delve into the research aspect to gain more insight in this field as it is a somewhat unknown territory to me. 

Rudrajeet Pal introduced me to the research project called BestBefore, which in short is a research project in collaboration with Fjällräven and Swedish institute for standards, where the aim is to develop an AI-based methodology for predictive analysis based on the degradation pattern for different durability properties over time, which will help put an optimum best-before date for sustainable longevity in the clothing industry. The research includes designing an experiment, including wash-tests and seam slippage tests according to ISO-standards, which will help gain insight in the degradation of Fjällräven products. The insight gained within this research project will hopefully result in replacing generic, resource intensive product development in the clothing industry with the help of a predictive method. 

The first two weeks of this research project has been changed as the plan was to delve straight into the experiments, including the wash tests, but due to the current Covid-19 situation, things have had to be altered, which has resulted in the focus on reading and researching to develop an extensive design of experiment. It something I’m new to and has been very interesting as it enables you to plan how the experiments will be executed down to the smallest details. By utilizing Design of experiment techniques, you can determine the individual and interactive effects of the various factors that can influence the outputs result of your measurements. By utilising DoE it’s possible to gain knowledge and estimate the best operating conditions of a system, process or product, and since we have received garments and fabric from Fjällräven that are quite expensive it’s necessary to ensure that all factors are taken into account when designing the experiment, so no errors are made and materials are wasted. 

After researching the basics of the techniques of the design of experiment I started doing research in the different ISO-standards that could be relevant for our testing phase as well as research articles relevant to the topic to gain more knowledge and understand how other research groups have implemented different experiments including the ISO-standards. the ISO-standards are thought as a formula that describes the best way to do something. Reading a range of ISO enabled me to map them and look at limitations in regard to which ones where possible to use in regard to the materials of the garments we had received. After mapping the ISO’s I could select two which were of the most value to the research project, while being feasible within the current time constraint. 

Following the research on standards for the experiments, I delved into researching the concept of longevity as it’s a relevant topic to the research topic and covers a lot of different aspects. When reading about longevity durability of clothing is often mentioned and what I found is that durability of garments can be divided into two, the first and most obvious is physical durability, which focuses on the garment construction and how the garment withstand  surface abrasion, odour, staining, colour fastness etc., which are aspect which can affect the lifetime of a garment. The second is emotional durability, which focuses on relevance and desirability. Just because a garment is made of good, strong materials doesn’t mean the active lifetime will be long, because the garment could fail in terms of becoming aesthetically obsolete. Emotional durability connects to comfort, how the garment ages, style, does it transcend across seasons and will it withstand the changing scene of the industry. Durability helps drive quality, which safeguards against garment failure and can ultimately strengthen brand reputation and cement customer satisfaction and loyalty. 

So far, I’ve managed to gain a lot of knowledge and is thoroughly excited to see how this research project will progress, even though there have been some alterations due to the current situation. I’m still trying to make the best of it and just diving into the field of research, spending a lot of time reading and finding relevant literature to the subject. I hope that within the next week I can finalize the design of experiment, so it can be revised by the partners involved and then continue researching the concept of longevity into more detail as it’s a concept which I find highly interesting and inspiring.