Ethi Collective

Sustainable lifestyle

Project Story

Ethi collective is the market place for sustainable fashion. Unlike the UK or US, it was a fairly new concept and business model for the Australian market. The challenge is validating the potential users' needs and pain points, identify the opportunities and merge them into the existing website. 

Do people really want to buy ethical clothing? 

Empathising the challenge 

Understanding the Australian market 

Not only the fashion industry is the second most polluting industry in the world, but Australia is also ranked second in the rate of disposal of fashion items into landfills. The awareness of ethical behaviour is increasing in the Australian market. Even just looking at the media in Australia, the  'War on waste' TV documentary on ABC received a great public acknowledgement, with fashion waste being one of the topics covered. (Photo reference: Daily Telegraph) 

Competitive & Comparative research 

The market is rapidly growing, the number of competitors doubled in 6 months. Moreover, seeing how the other successful marketplaces are doing in the market also gave me insights on how to better approach the users without having physical stores. 

User interviews & Field research 

The best way to understand what the real user wants and needs is 'asking them'. So I went out to the Melbourne streets, particularly the main target group's suburb and started talking to the people in the target market's demographic range. 

 Three Mindsets & identifying the pain point

Through the field research, I was able to talk to 55 people and created mindsets based on the insights that I gained. 

The key insights cannot be shared due to the undisclosed agreement. 

Defining the opportunity

Can Ethi become the main stream? 

Current site audit  

To improve the general experience and integrate the newer concept, I audited the current site. Based on this process, I also provided emergency suggestions to quickly improve the current user experience. 

Service design blue print

Considering the size of the organisation, understanding the backstage process is key. Reducing the workload and allocate the resources to gain the best result out of it. This will directly impact on the better user experience. 

Stakeholder workshop

To discover the potential services and add more value, I ran the stakeholder design jam to discover new ideas 

Design the experience

The experience for the users has just started

Information architecture & wireframing

I suggested the new information architecture & mockup design based on the research, ideation, sketch & rapid testing.  

Content strategy

For the ethical lifestyle industry, educating the audience is a big part of the marketing strategy. In order to effectively reach out to the users and potential customers, content strategy has to be set to both blog content and throughout the website.  

Testing and iterating

Where to from here? 

Ethical fashion industry has just started in Australia, therefore there will be unidentified needs and wants which will appear as it goes. As this was the first iteration, more testing, redefining and iterating will be necessary to create a seamless experience and service to the users. 

My takeaways

+ Talk to the real users to gain the insights 

+ Trust research and the process