Virtual display design and evaluation of clothing: a design process support system

Abstract

This paper proposes a new computer-aided educational system for clothing visual merchandising and display. It aims to provide an operating environment that supports the various stages of display design in a user-friendly and intuitive manner. First, this paper provides a brief introduction to current software applications in the field of computer-aided clothing display design. Second, it describes the structure of the process-based clothing display design system (PCDDS) as well as the function and workflow of display design. Finally, a user evaluation was conducted using quantitative and qualitative evaluation methods. The quantitative evaluation was conducted using the responses to a questionnaire on system usability from six instructors and application tests on PCDDS. The qualitative evaluation was conducted by interviewing six instructors and through the students’ experience reports. Evaluation results showed that most of the instructors agreed that the five modules (i.e., storyboard module, model database module, display design module, scene screenshot and animation module, and evaluation module) could help students and instructors to complete the entire display design process from the conceptualization to the evaluation of specific design solutions and to improve teaching quality. Results from the students’ report indicated that the employment of PCDDS in training could give them a better understanding of clothing visual merchandising and display.