Trusted sustainable sourcing for independent designers. A mobile app for evaluating suppliers, understanding certifications, and sourcing with confidence
I led this project end-to-end, from research through prototyping, focused on how hobbyists and emerging designers navigate sustainable sourcing for the first time. The final concept targeted the moments where trust breaks down most: understanding certifications, judging supplier credibility, and feeling confident enough to request a quote.
Context & Problem Space
Sourcing sustainable fabrics is opaque and difficult to trust. Independent designers face inconsistent supplier information, unclear sustainability claims, and limited visibility into viable options. That lack of transparency slows decisions and makes sustainable sourcing harder to approach with confidence.
The Challenge
How might we create a sourcing experience that builds trust, reduces certification confusion, and helps newcomers make more confident sustainable sourcing decisions?
Rather than designing another supplier directory, I focused on where sourcing confidence breaks down. Early research surfaced three recurring barriers: difficulty verifying sustainability claims, a fragmented research process, and the perception that sustainable fabrics were financially out of reach. These shaped the design direction and created a clear starting point for testing.
Problem Identification
1. Sustainability claims were hard to verify
Designers were wary of greenwashing and lacked the information to judge whether a supplier’s claims were credible.
2. The research journey was fragmented and exhausting
Key sourcing information was scattered across websites, marketplaces, and channels—making evaluation slow and mentally taxing.
High perceived costs and limited visibility into affordable alternatives made sustainable fabrics feel aspirational rather than attainable.
Together, these issues revealed a sourcing experience that felt fragmented, difficult to trust, and out of reach for many independent designers.
What does Bluesign stand for?
Supply chain transparency explained
Where to find sustainable deadstock fabrics locally
How to spot greenwashing
Research
To ground the design in market reality rather than assumptions, I examined industry data on certification barriers, buyer trust, and information access.
1. Certification literacy is a significant barrier to entry
Certifications like GOTS or OEKO-TEX aren’t instant trust signals for newcomers: they’re difficult to interpret, adding cognitive load before sourcing begins.
2. Sustainability claims are not trusted by default
Buyers do not automatically trust sustainability claims. In a market shaped by greenwashing and inconsistent proof, credibility has to be clearly demonstrated.
3. The gap is often informational, not motivational
Many first-time sustainable buyers want to make better choices but lack clear guidance. Without accessible verification context, it becomes easier to fall back on familiar options.
4. New buyers need guided, curated support experiences
Newcomers do not need the biggest possible supplier directory. They need curated recommendations, plain-language education, and clearer support as they evaluate options.
Visualizing the Customer Sourcing Experience
Process
Pain points revealed what was broken, but I needed to understand where those breakdowns appeared across the journey. I conducted 6 interviews with independent designers and fabric hobbyists, mapping from discovery to purchase. This surfaced the emotional and logistical friction shaping the experience.
Findings & Key Insights
1. Discovery felt overwhelming
At the start of the journey, designers were often met with an overload of fabric options and little guidance on how to narrow them down. Sustainability certifications were difficult to interpret, which made early exploration feel uncertain and intimidating.
2. Supplier comparison introduced friction
As users moved into evaluation and quote stages, comparing suppliers became difficult. Information like verification status, MOQ requirements, and supplier responsiveness was inconsistent or incomplete, making it harder to move forward with confidence.
3. Uncertainty continued after purchase
Trust concerns did not end once an order was placed. Users still wanted more clarity around delivery expectations, reordering exact fabrics, and what kind of support they could rely on after purchase.
Users were not looking for the biggest possible supplier directory. They wanted a more curated sourcing experience built around trustworthy suppliers, relevant context, and clearer decision-making support.
Solution & Highlights
The design focused on reducing friction across key sourcing decisions: from discovery to supplier evaluation and continued exploration. Each component makes sustainable sourcing feel more trustworthy, interpretable, and actionable.
Personalized onboarding
The onboarding flow captures each buyer’s intent, product category, and experience level, then uses those inputs to shape supplier recommendations, fabric suggestions, and the level of guidance shown throughout the experience.
Rather than sending every user into the same catalog, Etho Loom tailors discovery from the start to make sustainable sourcing feel more relevant and approachable.
Verified supplier profiles & fabric details
Supplier profiles bring together the trust signals buyers would otherwise have to piece together across multiple sources, including certifications, responsiveness, MOQ, pricing, services, and reviews.
Fabric detail pages extend that evaluation by surfacing composition, order requirements, and other key sourcing information in one place, helping users assess credibility and product fit without leaving the platform to verify details elsewhere.
Certification context & guided discovery
Certification context is surfaced at the moment buyers need it, using plain-language explanations and verification support to make sustainability claims easier to interpret.
As users continue exploring, similar supplier recommendations and sustainability education keep them in the sourcing loop, turning moments of uncertainty into opportunities for deeper understanding and more confident sourcing decisions.
Testing & Iteration
How might we surface certification credibility in a way that builds trust quickly, reduces cognitive load, and supports decision-making without overwhelming users?
Problem
Buyers want confidence that suppliers meet sustainability standards but don’t have time to deep dive into every certification during early exploration. When they do decide to investigate further, the process often breaks down: information is fragmented, overly technical, and difficult to connect back to their sourcing needs. Instead of building trust, deep dives can feel confusing and disconnected from the task at hand.
Why This Matters
1. Trust barrier
If buyers cannot verify what a certification guarantees, they may hesitate to engage or request a quote.
2. Cognitive overload
Dense certification text or excessive logos overwhelms users, leading them to skip valuable information.
3. Decision friction
Without contextualized breakdowns, buyers face uncertainty that slows project planning and sourcing.
4. Deep-dive roadblocks
Even motivated buyers struggle when digging deeper: official documents are technical, external databases aren’t user-friendly, and connections between certifications and actual products are unclear.
Solution
The design needed to work at two speeds: fast enough to signal credibility during casual exploration, and deep enough to support buyers who wanted to verify before committing. Rather than collapsing those needs into a single surface, the goal was to layer them, letting trust build progressively without frontloading complexity.
Testing how certification credibility should surface
I explored three ways to surface certification credibility inside the supplier profile: a dedicated details entry point, grouped cards, and interactive certification chips. The chip pattern performed best because it signaled trust quickly without adding unnecessary visual weight.
It gave buyers immediate reassurance that certification evidence existed, while preserving profile context and allowing deeper verification only when needed.
Iterating on certification detail structure
After selecting the entry pattern, I iterated on how certification information should be structured once opened. Earlier layouts made metadata, scope, and explanatory context feel too visually equal, increasing interpretation effort.
The final design introduced clearer layers of information, helping buyers move from quick recognition to deeper understanding and verification without feeling overwhelmed.
Results & Impact
Testing suggested that Etho Loom helped make supplier evaluation feel more trustworthy, actionable, and easier to understand for sustainable buyers.
The biggest shift was not whether participants could find information, but whether they felt equipped to use it. The design reduced evaluation uncertainty by bringing key trust signals into one clearer decision flow.
Faster trust-building during supplier evaluation
Consolidating certifications, MOQ, responsiveness, pricing, and sourcing details into a single profile helped participants form earlier credibility judgments. This effect was strongest for those with prior sourcing experience; beginners still needed more support interpreting certain trust cues.
Greater confidence before requesting a quote
When credibility markers, fabric requirements, and certification context appeared together, participants felt more prepared to decide whether a supplier was worth contacting. Keeping signals within the same evaluation flow reduced hesitation and made the path toward a quote more actionable.
Clearer certification understanding
Layered details and plain-language explanations helped participants better understand what certifications covered and why they mattered. Testing also revealed that users with lower familiarity still needed simpler framing: a clear opportunity for future iteration.