Trace

Project Overview

Duration

1 month

Role

Product Design

Team

1 UX Designer & Co-Founder

Problem

The fashion industry accounts for 10% of global greenhouse gas emissions, yet there is almost no standardized regulation around how brands report their sustainability practices. This creates two connected problems:

For eco-conscious consumers who want to shop responsibly, there's no reliable way to verify whether a brand's sustainability claims are real. Greenwashing is rampant, information is scattered, and the process of researching a brand before buying is time-consuming enough that most people give up.

For consumers who are new to sustainable fashion, the space feels overwhelming. They want to make better choices but don't know where to start, who to trust, or what metrics actually matter.

The goal was to design a platform that:

• Makes sustainability data accessible and understandable for everyday shoppers

• Connects consumers with brands that have verifiable ESG credentials

• Builds a community around conscious consumption

• Gives users the tools and guidance to shop more intentionally

Research & Discovery

Before designing, we conducted user research and competitor analysis to understand the space.

What competitors were missing: Existing sustainable fashion apps and directories either catered to already-informed users with dense data, or stayed so surface-level that they provided little real value. None of them combined product discovery, verified ESG metrics, community, and guided education in one experience.

Who we were designing for: Two distinct but connected users emerged:

The informed eco-conscious shopper — already aware of sustainability issues, actively seeking brands they can trust, frustrated by greenwashing and the lack of standardized information.

The newcomer — motivated to make better choices but overwhelmed by the complexity of sustainability metrics, unsure where to start, and needing guidance to build confidence.

Both users needed the same thing at the core: clarity and trust. The design had to work for someone deeply familiar with ESG metrics and someone encountering the concept for the first time.

Solution

Trace is a mobile platform that personalizes the sustainable shopping experience around what each user cares about, from carbon emissions to water waste to circular economy practices and makes ESG data readable, trustworthy, and actionable.

Key Flows

Onboarding & personalization Users select the sustainability categories they care about most during onboarding — carbon emissions, recycled materials, water waste, circular economy, and more. Trace then curates their entire experience around those choices. This made the app feel personal from the first session and reduced overwhelm for newcomers by anchoring everything to what they actually valued.

Product & brand pages The most critical flow in the product. Each product page leads with a green status indicator, followed by traceability, environmental impact, and social impact data in expandable sections. Brand pages extend this with certifications and community reviews. The goal was to make ESG data feel like useful context — not a compliance report.

Community feed Posts, product recommendations, and conversations around sustainable living. Competitor products treated sustainability as a solo pursuit — Trace treated it as something people do together, which reinforced behavior and built platform trust.

Expert finder & booking Users can discover sustainability experts, view verified profiles and client reviews, and book consultations directly in the app. End-to-end — discovery, profile, and scheduling — designed to feel as native and frictionless as anything else in the product.

Design Decisions

Organization donations Users can donate to environmental and social causes within the app, with flexible options including drop-off. This extended Trace beyond a shopping tool into a platform for action.

Personalization reduces overwhelm Rather than showing everyone the same feed, category selection ensures the app immediately reflects each user's priorities — making it accessible to newcomers while still giving informed users the depth they wanted.

ESG data layered, not dumped Sustainability metrics are complex by nature. A simple status indicator at the top gives newcomers a clear signal; expandable sections underneath give informed users the detail they want. Complexity on demand, not by default.

Community as a trust layer Greenwashing makes it hard to trust brand claims alone. Building peer reviews directly into product and brand pages adds social proof alongside official certifications — something no algorithm can replicate.

Final Solution

Outcomes & Reflections

Trace was designed end-to-end across all core flows in one month, onboarding, product discovery, ESG data presentation, community, expert access, and donations.

This project sharpened my ability to translate complex data into accessible consumer experiences, design for multiple user types within one product, and push the product beyond the original brief through close collaboration.

If revisiting today, I'd invest more in testing the ESG data presentation with real newcomer users, and develop a stronger design system to support the product as it scales.