FANSEE

Part of

Engage

One jersey for decades of fancy

MA 2023

Keywords

Sports, Sustainable, AR, Interactive

Overview

FANSEE is a service for football clubs that replaces traditional seasonal jerseys with one pair of (home and away) fixed jerseys made of recycled materials. It allows the users to customise their jerseys digitally on their portable devices, and display such unique identities via Augmented Reality, which further engages fans to build a more sustainable future for football collectives.

Collaboration

Co-design with Accenture Song.

SECTION ONE SECTION TWO STATEMENT SECTION THREE SECTION FOUR

Seasonal jerseys

Wearing a club jersey is a popular way for football fans to show devotion to their favourite clubs and players. In the football market today, jerseys are redesigned every season (equal to one year), and replica jerseys enter the massive market for fans.

This is clearly a cash grab by throwing as many items as they possibly can at fans to make more money. However, the massive production of seasonal jerseys means massive environmental damage. In 2021, these ten major clubs alone produced 18 million shirts, which equates to over 100 million kilograms of CO2 emissions. And sadly, this terrible situation is repeated every year.

We believe that design can make a change, so we bring FANSEE.

About FANSEE

FANSEE is a service for football clubs that, replaces traditional seasonal jerseys, with one pair of (home and away) fixed jerseys made of recycled materials. It allows the users to customize their jerseys digitally on their portable devices, and display such unique identities via Augmented Reality, which further engages fans to build a more sustainable future for football collectives.

Co-creation with football fans

We conducted workshops with 26 football fans and collected a lot of amazing ideas. We have been in contact with them throughout the project and have invited them to help us validate our final design.

Design challenges

How might we reduce jersey waste while enhancing the fan experience and designing a more sustainable business model for the clubs?

For fans and clubs

Better engagement

With a customised system in the club app, FANSEE provides different widgets for fans to customize their looks. Simply by scanning the back of the jersey, fans can view their own and others’ digital looks via an embedded AR feature, such as their cheering words, favourite players, and special memories.

Fixed jersey helps to keep the feeling of collective celebration, and new features like the customized widgets allow the users to express their looks digitally and freely, and lastly, the ar and scan features encourage fans to interact with like-minded people and explore other’s digital looks.

A more sustainable business

To clubs, FANSEE means more stable profits. The customised widget system can bring them the stable revenue of seasonal subscriptions. And more efficient and measurable brand exposure can help clubs to attract compatible sponsorships. At the same time, digitalization means lower marginal costs with easy maintenance. And it can also retain and attract members in a sustainable way.

For the environment

If a football club applies our solutions, we estimated that 5 years from now, FANSEE can help the club to reduce around 50% of jersey production, which means 50% less carbon emission. And we make these jerseys of recycled polyester and set up recycle bins in the jersey shop, to encourage fans to bring back their unwanted jersey in order to rejuvenate them and give them a second life.

If we keep promoting and implementing the recycling system of football jerseys, outstanding environmental impacts are expected to happen.

The AR effect

We used feature point labeling to distinguish patterns. When you scan, the picture on the back of the jersey is the same but with a different color, feature point will allow the system to know it is you. Thus, everyone will get a unique identity through AR lenses.

SPECIAL
THANKS

To Rachael, Ollie and the other colleagues from Accenture Song, for their invaluable support & insight;

To our tutor, Richard Atkinson, and all the tutors from the course (Judah, Kam, John), for providing us with suggestions, guidance, and motivation throughout the project; to Clive and Carolyn, for organizing and supporting the cohort throughout the course;

To Vincent (Goldsmiths), Gabriella Mas (RCA SD cohort), Jojo (RCA), Kuanchieh (RCA), Matthew, and all interviewees and survey respondents who shared their experiences and dedicated time to this project.

Team