Earthly Made
I was brought onto this team to tackle an issue that could promote environmental sustainability. Built in just 4 days, this marketplace app allows users to buy, sell, or trade unwanted clothes — ranging from men, women, and children clothing items and other items that constantly outgrow or go out of style. This is all an effort to reduce the number of wasted materials sent to landfills, or that negatively impact the environment if not discarded properly. My contribution to the team was the researcher conducting user interviews and usability testing, and building mockups and prototyping.
Role
UX Researcher Project Manager
Team
UX Designers: Sally Yang, Maurcell Melton, Daniel Elliget
Software Engineers: Brandon Wu, Sebastian Manion, Michael Starkman, Steven Laff
Tools
Figma, Adobe, Maze, Zoom, Hotjar, GitHub
Context
“Globally, 80 billion pieces of new clothing are purchased each year, translating to $1.2 trillion annually for the global fashion industry. The majority of these products are assembled in China and Bangladesh while the United States consumes more clothing and textiles than any other nation in the world. Approximately 85% of the clothing Americans consume, nearly 3.8 billion pounds annually is sent to landfills as solid waste, amounting to nearly 80 pounds per American per year” (Bick, Halsey, and Ekenga, 2018).
Challenge
Every season, consumers are bombarded with new fashion trends. Which leads to impulsive purchases for the sake of getting the latest and newest styles. There is a need for a sustainable and cost-effective way to buy, sell, or trade clothes without breaking one’s own budget.
Solution
In an effort to help solve these environmental issues and eliminate the carbon footprint of shipping, we created Earthly Made, a platform that allows shoppers to locally trade, sell, and buy clothes secondhand because we believe that one’s unused or gently worn clothes can be another one’s treasure.
Project Timeline
User Interviews
13 out of 16 respondents
learned about sustainable fashion through social media platforms.
43.8% of respondents
do not shop secondhand
87.5% of respondents
strongly disagreed with this statement, “The fashion industry informs consumers about environmental and social impacts of the manufacturing of their clothes”.
16 out of 16 respondents
look for quality when shopping for clothes and then cost.
Fast Fashion Water Consumption
“Global fashion also consumes 93 billion metric tons of clean water each year, about half of what Americans drink annually.
Cotton is an especially thirsty crop. For example, one kilogram of cotton used to produce a pair of jeans can consume 7,500 to 10,000 liters of water—the amount a person would drink over 10 years. Cotton production also requires pesticides and insecticides, which pollute the soil; runoff from fertilized cotton fields carry the excess nutrients to water bodies, causing eutrophication and algal blooms.
The dyeing process for fabrics, which uses toxic chemicals, is responsible for 17 to 20 percent of global industrial water pollution” (Cho, 2021).
User Persona
User Flow
For our MVP, we created a very straight-forward and simple user flow to help us establish our most important features. We needed our user Michelle to complete the checkout process.
Mid-Fidelity Wireframes
After exchanging constructive feedback and reaching a consensus on our ideas, we used our low fidelity sketches to start building our mid-fidelity wireframes. Once the basic framework of our wireframes was completed we began conducting usability tests so we can gather insights to make any necessary improvements.
Usability Testing
Using the remote usability testing tool, Maze, we conducted 4 rounds of usability tests where we had an 80% task completion score from users.
We received a 100% vote in product retention reflecting how many users see themselves using Earthly Made in the future. This helps us confirm that shoppers are willing to use the application.
Design Iterations
Carbon Footprint
Shipping emits 1,000 Mt CO2 per year, 3% of global CO2 emissions. Shipping also contributes to climate change through emissions of Black Carbon, tiny black particles, produced by combustion of marine fuel. The highest amounts of black carbon particles are produced by ships burning heavy fuel oil. Black carbon accounts for 21% of CO2-equivalent emissions from ships, making it the second most important driver of shipping’s climate impacts after carbon dioxide. (Source from MacArthur Foundation study)
High Fidelity
Create an Account
Creating an account is crucial for the user to get started on the application. The user will have the option to either Continue as a Guest, Create an Account, Log in with Apple, or Log in with their own Email of choice. This screen will appear for first-time users or if they are logged out of their account. After creating an account with Earthly Made, the user will be brought to the discovery page where they can browse on articles pertaining to sustainability!
Checkout process & favorites
To reduce the carbon footprint, we created the No Shipping Policy so users can shop locally and support small businesses. Once the purchase has been made, users can view their order and receipt in their profile page, along with their favorite brands and pieces saved.
Marketplace browsing and shopping
A lot of clothing brands have a resale market on their website. I wanted Earthly Made to be a platform encompassing secondhand shopping with only sustainable brands. The marketplace is just the place for users to browse and shop on whatever brands and pieces they are looking for secondhand. In addition, users can scan the product barcode to find similar finds that people are selling.
Future Improvements with Earthly Made
Reflections
I met my teammates for the very first time and we all had to figure out each others’ strengths and weaknesses, as well as how to work together effectively. I’m glad I had this opportunity to exercise my design skills as well as learn to be flexible with what can and cannot be done. I’m glad I had this chance to practice being vocal/communicate while I exercised my research skills to the team. I was able to share my insights and passion in sustainability to my fellow teammates, who were willing to challenge themselves and create something feasible for users to use every day.
If we were given more time, I would like to do a second round of usability testing on specifically male users only.
By leveraging and adding all size ranges, persons of color, male sustainable fashion brands, and LGBTQ+ owned small businesses, I think the product retention could go up to 100%.
In addition, I want to add an environmental calculator within the application so that users can consciously track where their clothes come from, how are they made, and so forth.
Oftentimes, we trust the company and/or the brand to be practicing sustainability and shopping more doesn’t actually solve the problem of climate change and global warming. Sustainability is how we actively reuse what we already have and make something new with it.