A web-based design support system for fashion technical sketches

Purpose - To better respond to today's volatile and changing fashion market, the purpose of this paper is to develop a web-based design support system that enables users to design realistic and interesting skirts in the form of technical sketches over the internet. Design/methodology/approach - The proposed system mainly consists of a sketch representation and composing method (SRCM), a graphic user interface (GUI) and a controller. The SRCM is implemented at the server end that generates technical sketches according to user defined parameters and features via the web-based GUI at the client side. The controller manages the workflows between the server and the clients. Findings - To evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed system, a survey was conducted by inviting 30 subjects (professional designers or undergraduate students studying fashion design) to have trial run of the system in Hong Kong and in the USA. Positive comments and feedbacks were received, and valuable suggestions were also obtained in regard to the prototype system. Originality/value - Compared with traditional computer-aided design (CAD) systems, the proposed system is more effective and easier to operate as users can create technical sketches in accurate proportions with simple computer operations in a few mouse clicks. Besides, the output sketches are fully compatible with most commercial CAD software. The system is developed based on web technologies, thus fashion sketches can be easily designed using any computer connected to the internet; it can be implemented on Android or iOS platform in the future.