Good Unless Intended - GR1 Analysis

Observations & Interviews

Person A:

A is a recently-graduated female who makes costumes for cosplay. She has some previous non-sewing costume-making experience (duct tape costumes) but very little actual sewing experience. Sewing experience is limited to making small alterations to existing clothing that is similar to the desired look but must be additionally altered or trimmed.

She self-describes her sewing as terrible-- "You should just look at my stitches"-- and uses only the cross stitch and the back stitch, mostly just to hold material together. She hides her poor stitching by finding clever ways to hide her poor stitching, such as using ribbon to cover up the messier edges on sewn-on lace. She has made mistakes such as sewing the front of a dress to the back of one while making an alteration, and then having to take all of her changes thus far out. She also is unfamiliar with how to handle various kinds of fabric, having at one point actually broken a needle while trying to stitch fur to faux snakeskin. In addition, because she did not have a thimble and did not think to acquire one, she found herself pricking her hands very frequently why trying to stitch these materials together.

In addition to the thimble, she wishes she had had more advice during the process. She had had a friend who stopped her and fixed her mistakes immediately before completely ruining a zipper, but she wished she had someone to advise her before such a potentially fatal mistake. 

Person B:

B is a young college female with minimal previous sewing experience (knew only the back stitch). Inspired by a friend, she wanted to learn how to sew to make a small plushie. B chose to make a plushie dog from a DIY kit purchased in Chinatown. The kit came with paper patterns, pieces of felt, stuffing thread and needle, no instructions, and labels written in Korean that she couldn't read.

B cut out the paper patterns and felt pieces from the paper patterns, but had difficulty putting the pattern together after that point. She describes it as a "3D puzzle, but 2D", and that she had difficulty visualizing which pieces whent where and how they came together to form a dog. She eventually vaguely figured out what to attach where to form a dog shape, but not very well She "ended up attaching the neck at one point, so how the dog has a broken neck". Eventually she sewed everything together and stuffed the dog, only to realize AFTER sewing it all together that she needed to have turned everything inside out before stuffing so that the seams would be on the inside and therefore not visible. 

She had difficulty doing the sewing, since she needed to realign the fabric and ended up twisting it a lot. She wishes the kit came with more pictures, and "more specific instructions" such as the flipping inside out and how to sew the head on.

Person C:

C is a young college male who participated in a sewing workshop for his first sewing experience. The workshop taught the basics of using a sewing machine.

Despite having a face-to-face instructor helping him, C still had difficulties with "threading the machine so the thread wouldn't fall off" and "making sure the fabric was moving at the right speed." He wishes that he had better instructions on how to set the sewing machine settings and access to fabric that was neither too thick nor too thin.

User Groups

People interested in sewing as a hobby and want a way to start

Characteristics:

- have lots of free time!
- want an avenue for creativity
- want to start a long term relationship with sewing
- tend to be female

Needs/Goals:

- find an interesting project that is appropriate for their skill level

- have very detailed step-by-step instructions that are easy to follow-- detailed to a level that would frustrate more experienced sewers, but may be necessary to avoid beginner mistakes

- acquire the beginnings of a well-rounded skill set that they can build on in the future to allow them to take on more difficult projects in the future

People who want to learn how to sew for a specific goal in mind (old user class, no longer within scope of project)

Characteristics:

- need sewing only to accomplish a particular task
- how involved this task may be varies-- could be just a simple repair or making a specific costume
- generally wants to not spend as much money
- not as female-skewed as the want-to-pick-up-as-hobby group

Needs/Goals:

- have straightforward but clear instructions to complete the specific task

- easily find a fix given a specific problem (instead of having to browse through things)

- have an easy-to-navigate reference (including common gotchas)

- learn how to solve basic sewing-related problems/categories of problems themselves for future quick fixes

Other considerations to keep in mind:

- age groups (small kids? old folks?)
- physical capabilities (unsteady hands? bad eyesight? dexterity?)
- monetary considerations (have more or less money to spend on a project?)
- technological savviness