Our team wants to explore the issue of animal cruelty and exploitation through critical design. Animal cruelty is often masked by the framing of institutions and companies. With animals, for the most part, being unable to defend themselves from human activities, they are constantly being exploited. Our position is that in modern society, we have the resources and affordance to conduct more research about animal exploitation. We want to evoke critical thinking in the issue of animal cruelty in things that may be framed as beneficial for animals.
Team
Jisoo Lee, Sheri Wong, Alex Aguilar
My Roles
User research, UX design, Prototype, Interaction Design, Copywrite, Content Strategy
Tools
Figma, Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, After Effects
Ensuffur is a company that emerged from finding a niche in the market of wearing live animals to counter animal cruelty of wearing fur. By wearing live animals and turning them into a fashion statement, the consumers are raising awareness that these animals still need help and protect them from being poached.
In the year 2020, using the animal’s skin and fur for clothing is receiving heavy backlash.
Ensuffur is a company that emerged from finding a niche in the market of wearing live
animals to counter animal cruelty of wearing fur. By wearing live animals and turning them
into a fashion statement, the consumers are raising awareness that these animals still need
help and protect them from being poached. Further, the company has partnered up with a
health clinic to perform monthly check-ups on these animals.
To further illustrate the animal cruelty of wearing fur, I have sketched several concept
arts for one to envision what Ensuffur products would look like.
Our target audience is people who only look at surface levels of animal exploitation. Meaning that they (convince themselves to) believe that the companies are doing a 100% honourable act and are acting in the animals’ best interest. Our target audience belongs to the upper bracket. They are financially capable of protecting live exotic animals by purchasing Ensuffur products. At the same time, they do not have to associate themselves with the inhumane way of fur production and are still able to experience the novelty of owning something rare.
To further strengthen the affluential influence of Ensuffur, I have chosen navy
blue and
dusty pink as the main color theme for the branding. The website uses navy as the primary
color and dusty pink as the secondary color for texts
and graphics. This color palette is intended to create a feel of modernity yet luxurious to
the overall user experience on site.
Poppins is used for headers and
Avenir (Light) as body texts. The buttons are duo tone with blue and pink overlapped.
The color contrast is bright yet inviting.
One of the biggest challenges we have faced as a team was our original exhibition plan got
disrupted
by Covid-19. Our orginal plan was to bring in a dog dressed in a mane as a tiger and pair it
with a
series of furnitures and fashion products to promote Ensuffur service to our audience.
However,
we
had to discard this plan when classes become online due to Covid-19.
The following
challenge
we
face
is to build a believable world around Ensuffur service. In order to tackle this challenge,
we
had
built various of artifacts to demonstrate and deliver diverse information in different
approaches. For example, we have created a news article to bash on
↳ To view the messenger prototype - Click here
↳ To view the instagram prototype - Click here
Speculative Design: Ensuffur from Sheri Wong on Vimeo.
This project was a good opportunity for me to practice my visual and user interface skills and to gain project ownership in those aspects. One part I would have wanted to improve is to gain professional insights from those in the field of e-commerce to have a more effective and accurate representation of a viable product. Regardless, I was able to learn and apply all of the skills I have learned over the years and effectively apply them to a project that I enjoyed creating with my team!