Fast Fashion and the Sustainable Development Goals
Navigating the path to a responsible fashion industry
In today’s social impact landscape, organizations are constantly seeking to bridge the gap between vision and execution. It’s not enough to have a good — or even great — idea; precision is just as crucial as intention. You need a clear plan, a system for putting it into action, and a framework to assess whether it’s achieving real, measurable change.
Two approaches have emerged as especially powerful in driving meaningful outcomes: Human-Centered Design (HCD) and Impact Strategy. Used separately, each has its strengths. HCD provides an empathetic methodology rooted in deep listening and a commitment to creating solutions that truly serve people’s needs. Impact Strategy, on the other hand, establishes metrics for success and aligns efforts with specific, long-term goals. However, when combined, these approaches have the potential to spark innovation that not only delivers immediate results but also generates sustainable impact on a global scale.
At its core, HCD begins with real people — individuals whose needs, experiences, and aspirations guide the entire design process. The fundamental principle is straightforward: if you’re not actively involving those you aim to help, you’re merely guessing. This risk is particularly acute when confronting real-world challenges, where misguided assumptions can translate into missed opportunities — or, worse, unintended harm.
Consider the simple act of designing a toothbrush for children. Without understanding how a child naturally grips objects, a designer might rely on assumptions about what size or shape works best. Instead, human-centered design (HCD) informed the creation of larger, easier-to-hold handles that make brushing more comfortable and fun for young users. Oral-B offers a notable example: by partnering with IDEO, they reimagined their kids’ toothbrushes using insights directly gathered from children and their caregivers. Likewise, designing a mobile app for low-literate users might mean simplifying navigation, increasing button sizes, and relying more on visuals than text. Ultimately, it’s not just about functionality — it’s about ensuring accessibility, intuition, and true usability for the intended audience.
One of the core principles of human-centered design (HCD) is iteration. Rather than following a straight path, the design process is a cycle of learning and refining driven by user feedback. This ongoing approach helps ensure that solutions remain both effective and responsive to changing needs.
Consider, for example, the creation of a diabetes management app. An initial version might focus on medication reminders and blood sugar monitoring. Yet after gathering user feedback, developers might discover a demand for nutrition guides or a chat feature to connect patients with healthcare professionals. By continuously testing and tweaking, the app evolves into a tool that genuinely supports the everyday challenges of living with a chronic condition.
A compelling illustration of this is MySugr, which has amassed over five million downloads. Acquired by Roche in 2017 for nearly $100 million, MySugr is now among the most widely used platforms on the market due to its robust feature set.
Display of MySugr Features
Even the most innovative design cannot achieve much without a clear plan for impact. Impact Strategy functions as the roadmap that translates your efforts into measurable, sustainable outcomes by establishing well-defined metrics. While human-centered design (HCD) focuses on the “how” of creating solutions, Impact Strategy provides the “why,” keeping interventions aimed at meaningful results.
Aligning HCD with Impact Strategy from the start can radically improve how we address social issues.
Imagine a community-based education program for young girls in a rural setting. HCD ensures that lessons are tailored to local languages, cultural norms, and learning styles. Yet Impact Strategy asks the broader questions: Does the program increase attendance and graduation rates for girls? Does it empower them to flourish economically and socially within their community? How do these outcomes evolve over time, and what can be learned to improve future initiatives?
A prime example is the “Girl Effect” program, which tracks success not merely by the number of girls enrolled in school, but by long-term achievements such as economic independence and social mobility. Impact Strategy ensures that metrics go beyond basic outputs—like the number of students served or annual retention rates—to capture deeper, more meaningful transformations, including how education breaks the cycle of poverty for these young women and their families. Without a robust impact strategy or evaluation framework, a program risks overlooking key data or failing to detect critical local nuances that inform long-term results.
GirlEffect’s Landing Page
Aligning HCD with Impact Strategy from the start can radically improve how we address social issues. By merging HCD’s empathy-driven methodology with the structured rigor of Impact Strategy, solutions remain deeply user-focused while delivering measurable outcomes that stand the test of time.
Consider an adaptive learning platform created through HCD, designed to adjust to each learner’s pace and style. How can we determine if it truly narrows achievement gaps or boosts learning outcomes for marginalized students? Here, Impact Strategy provides a clear framework of goals and metrics, ensuring that the technology is both effective and equitable.
For instance, the company TLDR faced significant challenges in both retaining and attracting users. By incorporating HCD practices, integrating AI-driven personalization (based on internal reviews), and redefining their key performance indicators (KPIs), TLDR increased monthly active users by 25%. This growth followed a major redesign of the platform’s user interface, which more closely aligned with users’ actual needs and expectations.
Similarly, a patient portal guided by HCD might excel in streamlining user navigation and doctor-patient communication. Yet Impact Strategy goes further, assessing whether the portal improves health outcomes, raises patient satisfaction, or optimizes healthcare resource usage. A telling example is MyChart, owned by Epic Systems. Through continuous engagement with end users — primarily patients — MyChart has integrated multiple features to enhance usability, reinforce doctor-patient rapport, increase health awareness, and encourage better treatment compliance.
Features Available on MyChart
Ultimately, the complex challenges we face demand solutions that are both imaginative and rooted in evidence. The intersection of HCD and Impact Strategy embodies this balanced approach: it merges empathy-based, user-focused design with rigorous metrics and a long-term vision for sustainable change. By uniting these two perspectives, we heighten our ability to create interventions that not only resonate with people’s needs but also deliver meaningful, lasting impact on the issues that matter most.
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