FIRE.Digital: Digital Research Platform for Collaborative Fashion Innovation

微型、中小型设计师时装和纺织品企业是更广泛的英国时尚和纺织品行业的引擎，推动了大众市场部门的大部分创意概念化。然而，缺乏资源和时间的时装和纺织部门缺乏时间和资源，抑制了时尚中小企业的研发文化，削弱了英国部门创新和利用发明并保持国际竞争优势的能力。自然资源枯竭、消费和浪费加剧、来自海外的竞争以及设计师时尚季节性导致的金融波动等压力日益增大，这些都有力地表明，从生态和经济角度来看，目前的时尚商业模式是不可持续的。时装设计师和大学研究人员之间的合作研发在解决这些问题方面具有巨大的潜力，但这一领域目前还处于起步阶段。微型企业和中小企业对大学研究、其潜在利益和可用的资金机会缺乏了解。这些企业无法将资源分配给研发，超出了应用的创造性方法，但很少被设计师时装所利用。大学研究人员经常与行业隔绝，使用不同的语言和时间框架，并不总是与行业的需求和期望兼容。FIR.Digital通过为专注于研究的英国时尚中小企业和研究人员网络开发第一个数字平台来解决这些问题。该平台的主要目标是促进合作研究和创新，并提供英国时尚中小企业和研究网络的可持续数据来源。FIRE.Digital将在现有的伦敦FIREup数字原型(www.fireup.org.uk)的基础上发展成为一个高端在线工具，供整个英国时尚行业和研究人员通过用户友好的在线网络连接，并访问经过策划的时尚和纺织品研究内容，包括新闻和资金机会。FIRE.Digital将开发现有的标准后端工具，以创建定制的数字数据整理和可视化工具和方法，从而能够从注册用户中捕获定量和定性数据。这些数据将对时尚中小企业的结构、时尚和纺织品研究人员的定位、英国时尚网络的形成、时尚中小企业和研究人员的数字行为、英国时尚业合作研究和开放创新的障碍提供重要的见解，并导致建立新的研究课题。这些工具可能会在更广泛的创意产业研究背景下得到应用。FIRE Focus Group由设计师时尚和纺织中小企业和研究人员组成，将用于分析、开发和测试平台。UAL研究人员将专注于定义时尚本体和类型学，这将支持网站的功能，并作为英国时尚和纺织行业数字化分类的基准。英国时尚研究人员和时尚/纺织相关高等教育机构的综合数据库将被收集起来，以填充该平台，并为协作研究提供一个可访问的潜在学术伙伴的知识库。对潜在的时尚研究新闻和信息源的整理和分类将为持续的时尚和纺织研究流提供基础。并作为时尚中小企业和研究人员的参考资源，包括开发以开创性人物和研究主题为特色的新社论内容。

Micro, small and medium designer fashion and textile businesses act as an engine for the wider UK fashion and textilesector, driving much of the creative conceptualization for the mass-market sector. However, lack of time and resources inthe resource- and time-poor fashion and textile sector has inhibited R&D culture in fashion SMEs, weakening the UKsector's ability to innovate and capitalize on invention, and retain competitive edge internationally. Increasing pressuressuch as natural resource depletion, escalating consumption and waste, competition from overseas, and financialfluctuations driven by the seasonal nature of designer fashion all strongly indicate that the current fashion business modelis unsustainable from both ecological and economic perspectives.Collaborative research and development between fashion designers and university researchers has great potential inaddressing these issues, however this space is currently in its infancy.Micro enterprises and SMEs have a poor understanding of university research, its potential benefits and available fundingopportunities. These businesses cannot allocate resource toward R&D beyond the inventive approaches applied butseldom capitalized upon in designer fashion. University researchers often work in isolation from the sector, use a differentlanguage and time frames that are not always compatible with industry needs and expectations.FIRE.Digital addresses these issues by developing the first digital platform for research-focused UK network of fashionSMEs and researchers. The key aim of the Platform is to galvanize collaborative research and innovation and providesustainable source of data on UK fashion SMEs and research network.Building on the existing London-focused FIREup digital prototype (www.fireup.org.uk), FIRE.Digital will develop into a highendonline tool for a UK-wide network of fashion industry and researchers to connect via user-friendly online network, aswell as access curated fashion and textile research content, including news and funding opportunities.FIRE.Digital will develop existing standard backend tools to create bespoke digital data collation and visualization tools andmethodologies, enabling capture of quantitative and qualitative data from the registered users. This data will providesignificant insights into the structure of fashion SMEs, positioning of fashion and textile researchers, UK Fashion networkformations, digital behavior in fashion SME's and researchers, barriers to collaborative research and open innovation in theUK fashion industry and lead towards establishing new research topics. These tools could potentially find application inwider creative industry research context.FIRE.Digital strategic and technical elements will be developed in collaboration with a Digital Agency. FIRE Focus Group,consisting of designer fashion and textile SMEs and researchers, will be utilized for analysis, development and testing ofthe platform.UAL researchers will focus on defining fashion ontology and typology, which will underpin the site functionalities, as well asact as a benchmark for classification of UK fashion and textile sector for digital purposes.A comprehensive database of UK fashion researchers and fashion/textile relevant higher education institutions will becollated in order to populate the platform and provide an accessible knowledge database of potential academic partners forcollaborative research.The collation and classification of potential sources of fashion research news and information will provide a basis for asustainable stream of fashion and textile research, and act as a reference resource for both fashion SMEs and researchersincluding development of new editorial content featuring groundbreaking people and research themes.