EcoThreads
Making sustainable fashion easier to understand at the moment of purchase.
Fashion Retail
E-commerce
Role
UI/UX Designer
Research Collaborator
Industry
3 Person Team
Skills
Figma
Adobe Illustrator
Team
Timeframe
3 Months
EcoThreads combines new and secondhand fashion in a familiar shopping experience, surfacing sustainability information where users already make purchasing decisions.
Sustainable Shopping Requires Too Much Work
Shopping sustainably is fragmented and time consuming. Comparing materials, verifying brand claims, and searching across separate new and secondhand marketplaces places the burden of sustainable decision making on the shopper.
Our research suggested that even when people care about sustainability, that additional effort can break down at the moment of purchase.
Developing EcoThreads was not an opportunity to teach people how to shop sustainably.
It was an opportunity to reduce the work required to do it.
What We Heard
Across interviews and secondary research, four recurring signals pointed to the same problem: people wanted to make more sustainable choices, but existing shopping experiences required too much research, trust, and compromise.
Three Tensions Shaped the System
These tensions shifted EcoThreads from an educational problem to a systems problem. Rather than asking shoppers to research and interpret sustainability claims independently, the platform would absorb that complexity and surface useful information directly within the shopping flow.
From Strategy to Interface
Before moving into Figma, I sketched the core shopping flow by hand, exploring how sustainability information and secondhand alternatives could fit within familiar ecommerce patterns without adding more work for the shopper.
Designing the Experience
EcoThreads translates this strategy into a familiar shopping experience where new and secondhand products can be explored together and sustainability information appears directly within product decisions. The project became my first opportunity to turn hand drawn interaction concepts into a fully interactive Figma prototype.
The Broader EcoThreads System
EcoThreads is a connected retail system rather than a standalone app. My teammates extended the concept through a branding system, fiber recommendation algorithm, and a physical return and resale environment. Together, these components connect digital shopping, material consumption, and garment reuse.
Branding
Algorithm
App
Physical Space
EcoThreads changed how I thought about sustainable behavior. Instead of asking people to become experts, I learned to embed better choices into behaviors that already exist.
Reflection
Simplifying sustainability makes information easier to act on, but standardized ratings can reduce the complexity of environmental impact. Future development would require stronger validation and greater transparency around how ratings are calculated.