Introduction – Digital Journeys: Supporting Student Workflow in Fashion Education with Design Software

Choosing the right software at the right stage of a project is a recurring challenge in fashion education. This short video introduces Digital Journeys, a visually designed learning resource that I developed to help students navigate creative software workflows with greater clarity and confidence. Digital Journeys addresses this through two core features:

• an interactive Roadmap, where students can visualise their project journey and tasks required to meet learning outcomes
• Quick Search function, which allows students to look up specific tasks and reiceive a direct answer on which software to use, explains shortly the reasoning on why this is appropriate, and suggests alternatives where appropriate.

The video below provides a brief overview of the Digital Journeys resource and demonstrates how it is intended to be used in practice.

Digital Journeys Introduction Video (04:45) (Click to watch)

What triggered the project

• Students consistently used inappropriate or non-industry software for assessed tasks
• Resistance to learning unfamiliar software; preference for “what they already know”
• Confusion around why multiple software tools (Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, CLO3D) are used within one project
• International students struggled with dense technical terminology during short teaching sessions
• No existing resource clearly showed the workflow across multiple software platforms

Navigating Software Choices in Industry-Led Practice

Through my role as a Learning Technology technician and Creative Digital Sofware associate lecturer at London College of Fashion, I have observed that this uncertainty often leads students feeling too overwhelmed to start the project and to inefficient workflows that leads to frustration and lost time, particularly when students attempt to complete complex outputs, such as portfolios, in software that is not aligned with industry-standard practice. Industry-standard practice refers to software that operates as a de facto global standard, established through widespread and sustained adoption across professional fashion and design practice, higher education curriculum, and global industry production workflows, rather than through formal regulation or regional preference. Market analyses indicate that Adobe Creative Cloud and its core applications (including Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign) hold a substantial share of the global creative software market (Adobe products command over 80% of the graphic design software market according to Statista, 2024), with Adobe reported as the leading provider in this sector and its tools widely adopted across professional creative workflows (Straits Research, 2025; Exploding Topics, 2024).

Mapping Digital Guidance Through Design

This challenge is further compounded by the limited visual guidance provided in current unit handbooks, which are often written in academic language and do not clearly articulate digital workflows or professional software expectations. In my experience as a fashion design studio assistant, In professional design practice, software is selected strategically according to task and output rather than personal preference. In response to these recurring issues, this action research project explores the development of Digital Journeys, a visually designed learning resource intended to clarify creative software workflows and support students’ confidence and decision-making in ways that better reflect industry-standard practice in the UK fashion sector.

Designing for Equity and Clarity in Digital Learning

Rather than framing students’ uncertainty around software choice as a lack of skill or preparedness, this project positions workflow clarity as a responsibility of educational and instructional design. Digital Journeys is conceived as a visually led intervention that makes digital expectations explicit, transparent, and aligned with professional practice, supporting students to navigate complex creative processes with greater confidence and autonomy. Digital Journeys is meant to act as a companion to the hanbook and materials not a replacement. By foregrounding clarity, accessibility, design and consistency, the project seeks to reduce unnecessary barriers to learning and promote more equitable engagement with industry-standard digital tools within fashion education.