Injoo Kim — Fashion Design Coordinator and Professor
By: Juliana Yip-Ono
Injoo Kim is a long time family friend of mine, practically an auntie, and one of DAAP’s finest — both a professor and coordinator in the Fashion Design discipline. She bases her design work and research on the foundation of holistic design thinking. From that, she currently is working to optimize current sizing systems to include a wider audience and researching knitting techniques to make clothing more wearable for users. I selected Injoo because I think it is important to understand that the stereotype of glitz and glamour in fashion is not an accurate representation of the majority of the field. Like any other discipline, Fashion Design has a design thinking process which should aim at best serving it’s audience and their needs. Injoo Kim has done just that.
Cops in Couture
Deemed one of the hardest projects in her career, Injoo said that her collaborative project with UCPD and Cincinnati Police was the epitome of User Centered Design in the context of fashion. She commented that, really, it (and any form of uniform) should be classified as functional design. Functional design goes beyond purely the aesthetics, it encompasses thought out data centered around the user collected. The team was tasked with rebranding the officers after the negative connotations that came from the DuBose shooting in 2015 and the context of police brutality in the nation.
What user-centered design principles and methods did the designer utilize?
Simply put, research was the basis of the rebrand of the UCPD and Cincinnati Police. Injoo and her team’s research consisted of observations of practices, experience in the real world, interviews, publication of prior research, and present trend and function. This research, especially the real world experience and interviews, “builds empathy towards users,” which is crucial for good design (Injoo Kim). Post initial research, ideation sketches would be produced and mockups would be created and shared with several focus groups, the more the better. After receiving revisions from the focus groups, the team would go back to revisit their initial concepts. After, prototypes would be made and tested in wear tests. This process is repeated as many times as needed and as funding allows.
Whom are the designers target audience? What was their gender, generation, culture, and profession?
There were two target audiences for this project — the police officers and the general Cincinnati public. While the characteristics of the Cincinnati public span all categories, there was largely one main profile for Cincinnati police — white, roughly middle aged, and male. This is a symptom of being in the midwest. It is also a facet that made the rebrand very difficult given the context of police brutality in this day in age.
How did practicing user-centered design add value to the project as a whole?
User-centered design was crucial in this project to appease both the needs of the officers and the perception of the officers by the Cincinnati public. It was important for the design team to personally experience and observe what actions officers had to make and how they might want to feel wearing their potential new uniforms. Injoo stated that they struggled with finding a balance in making officers feel both protected, comfortable, stylish and approachable. Older, more standard uniforms required more layers to protect, but sacrificed the integrity of the aesthetic quality. Officers voiced that they wanted to look streamlined. Also, previous uniforms had been too authoritarian, causing stigma around officers from civilians.
What are the key takeaways from this assignment?
Injoo stated my takeaway perfectly, “human centered design is the foundation of it all and all [I] do, it is everything.” Good design is so much more complicated than it presents itself to be. That meaning that there is so much more that is considered behind what meets the eye. Technically, I’ve always known that, but hearing what Injoo and her team did to consider their users really made me appreciate user-centered design, honestly even design in general, a whole lot more.
Sources
In person interview with Injoo Kim on Thursday, September 20th, 2018.