Call for Papers
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Fashion Design and UX v.20 n. 52
Submissions: July to december 2026
Publication: July 2027
Organizers:
Juliana Bueno, Ph.D. (Universidade Federal do Paraná) – Orcid
Thiago Varnier, Ph.D. (Instituto Federal de Santa Catarina) – Orcid
The call for papers for the dossier “Fashion Design and UX” is now open, inviting researchers, academics, and professionals to reflect on the relationships between Fashion, Design, User Experience (UX), and human-centered design processes.
Over recent decades, the field of Fashion has undergone significant transformations driven by social, technological, cultural, and behavioral changes. More than responding to aesthetic or functional demands, contemporary Fashion Design is challenged to conceive broader experiences involving symbolic, emotional, sensory, and ergonomic dimensions. In this context, clothing is no longer understood merely as a material artifact but rather as a mediator of experiences, emotions, identities, and interactions between the body, the user, and the environment.
At the same time, the concept of User Experience (UX) became established in the late twentieth century with the advancement of the Information Age and the expansion of discussions regarding interactions among users, products, services, and interfaces. According to Garrett (2011), no aspect of the user experience occurs without the awareness or intention of the individual interacting with a system. Although widely disseminated in digital contexts, UX extends beyond computational interfaces and proves relevant to all areas of Design, including Fashion.
When designing from a user-centered perspective, designers seek new approaches to improve people's lives (Ku & Lupton, 2020). Understanding that people are complex requires well-structured design research methods (Pontis & Babwahsingh, 2024). Furthermore, the growing complexity of consumption and usage relationships demonstrates that users seek not only functional efficiency but also pleasurable and memorable experiences (Hassenzahl, 2010; Tonetto & Desmet, 2016). Consequently, Design increasingly considers needs, behaviors, and expectations that go beyond technical performance, incorporating emotional, affective, symbolic, aesthetic, and experiential aspects.
According to Desmet and Hekkert (2007), experiences are shaped both by user characteristics—such as background, culture, personality, and motivations—and by product attributes, including form, texture, color, materiality, and behavior. Within the context of Fashion, these relationships become even more complex, as dressing involves bodily, subjective, social, and cultural dimensions that directly influence how individuals perceive, use, and assign meaning to clothing artifacts.
In this scenario, concepts such as ergonomics, usability, emotional design, participatory design, and co-creation become essential for developing products, services, and experiences that are more inclusive, accessible, and user-centered. Usability, understood as an integral component of User Experience (Nielsen, 2007; Law et al., 2009), relates to efficiency, effectiveness, and satisfaction during interaction. However, UX broadens this understanding by incorporating hedonic, emotional, and aesthetic perceptions (Hassenzahl & Tractinsky, 2006), enabling more holistic approaches to Fashion Design.
Moreover, discussions on UX in Fashion are expanding into hybrid and technological contexts, encompassing wearables, wearable interfaces, digital consumer experiences, virtual fitting rooms, three-dimensional modeling, personalization, artificial intelligence, and interactive systems. These transformations are reshaping the ways Fashion is designed, produced, consumed, and experienced, requiring new methodologies, tools, and critical perspectives.
Therefore, this dossier seeks to bring together interdisciplinary research that investigates the intersections between Fashion and UX, considering creative processes, design methodologies, ergonomics, interaction, inclusion, technologies, and user-centered experiences.
Topics of Interest
We welcome articles presenting interdisciplinary reflections and addressing, but not limited to, the following topics:
UX, Ergonomics, and Experience in Fashion
· User Experience applied to Fashion Design;
· Ergonomics and Usability in Clothing Design;
· Emotional Design and sensory experiences in Fashion;
· User-centered Fashion Design;
· Relationships between the body, perception, and clothing;
· Total clothing comfort;
· Inclusive Fashion, accessibility, and diversity.
Design Processes and Methodologies
· Fashion Design processes guided by UX principles;
· Participatory Design and co-creation in Fashion;
· User research tools and methods;
· Fashion education incorporating UX approaches;
· User-centered methodologies applied to clothing design;
· Sustainability and User Experience in Fashion.
Fashion, Technology, and Interaction
· Wearables and wearable technologies;
· Digital interfaces applied to Fashion;
· Hybrid and digital consumer experiences;
· Virtual fitting rooms and 3D modeling;
· Artificial intelligence and personalization in Fashion;
· Interactive technologies applied to clothing.
References:
Desmet, P. M. A., & Hekkert, P. (2007). Framework of product experience. International Journal of Design, 1(1), 57–66. http://www.ijdesign.org/index.php/IJDesign/article/view/66/15
Garrett, J. J. (2011). The elements of user experience: User-centered design for the web and beyond (2nd ed.). New Riders Publishing.
Hassenzahl, M. (2010). Experience design: Technology for all the right reasons. Morgan & Claypool Publishers.
Hassenzahl, M., & Tractinsky, N. (2006). User experience: A research agenda. Behaviour & Information Technology, 25(2), 91–97. https://doi.org/10.1080/01449290500330331
Ku, B., & Lupton, E. (2022). Health design thinking: Creating products and services for better health (2nd ed.). MIT Press.
Law, E. L.-C., Roto, V., Hassenzahl, M., Vermeeren, A. P. O. S., & Kort, J. (2009). Understanding, scoping and defining user experience: A survey approach. In Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '09) (pp. 719–728). Association for Computing Machinery. https://doi.org/10.1145/1518701.1518813
Nielsen, J. (2007). Usabilidade na web. Elsevier.
Pontis, S., & Babwahsingh, M. (2024). Information design unbound: Key concepts and skills for making sense in a changing world. Bloomsbury Publishing.
Tonetto, L. M., & Desmet, P. M. A. (2016). Why we love or hate our cars: A qualitative approach to the development of a quantitative user experience survey. Applied Ergonomics, 56, 68–74. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apergo.2016.03.008
