Ethica

An app for promoting ethical consumption

The Ethica App is an app that would assists consumers in making ethical purchasing decisions.

You can try out the Figma prototype of Ethica here.

Project Overview

Problem

Timeline

One month

Project Info

Design Exercise

Tools

Photoshop, Illustrator, Figma

Consumers want to buy ethically made products, but when comparing two products how can a user tell which product is more ethically made?

Solution

Ethica is a concept for an app that would allow users to scan the barcode on a retail item and then receive a rating for how ethically made that product is based on individual factors like “environmental impact of manufacturing”, and “ethical labor practices”. The user will be able to view the overall score a product receives, as well as the individual factors that the products are scored on. These scores would be based on data sourced from established organizations such as the EPA.

Design Process

Research Stage

Ethica was a self driven project, inspired my my own desire to consume more ethically. I often ask myself how ethical the products I buy really are, and I know that there are other consumers out there like me.

This project started with me conducting a user survey of 10 friends and family members centered around what would motivate them to consume more ethically. From this survey it was clear that consumers wanted to consume more ethically, but that they were unsure how to determine how ethical a product was. From that I came up with the idea of an app that would give consumers a rating for how ethical a product is, and made a few personas of who the typical users of the app might be.

Design Stage

I then made a user flow with pen and paper and then a few iterations of wireframes in Figma showing the action a user could take in the app. Finally I made a clickable prototype in Figma using the wireframes as the base for the clickable version.

Evaluation Stage

Next I asked my initial survey participants to try out the clickable prototype while I observed them and took notes on potential usability problems. After the testing session they were asked to fill out a PSSUQ (Post-Study System Usability Questionnaire) this type of questionnaire was first developed by IBM and aims to measure a user’s satisfaction with an app or system. Over the course of the questionnaire and usability observation, a few key changes that could be made to the app arose. 1. The users wanted a way to see a saved product’s rating on the product list screen. 2. The users wanted a way to sort their saved products based on the scoring categories of the Ethica score, for example some user stated that they prioritize reducing plastic waste in their lives and therefore wanted a way to sort products by packaging score. These changes will be taken into consideration should a future iteration of the app be made.