TACKLING THE GLOBAL GREENWASHING CRISIS
Design Project #3
For our final project, which lasted 6 weeks, we were tasked with taking a deep dive into greenwashing. Unlike the first two projects, this one had a heavy emphasis on research to help us narrow down which issue to focus on.
BACKGROUND RESEARCH
Greenwashing refers to the marketing practice in which businesses seek to capitalize on the growing movement for environmentally sound products by selling goods labeled as green that actually aren’t. It targets users who care about sustainability and want to make environmentally friendly choices. The term originated in the 1960s, when hotels asked customers to reuse towels to reduce their laundry costs. Greenwashing is also common in the fast fashion industry nowadays. H&M labeled clothes made with weakened recycled polyester that is one-way street to landfill sustainable. URBN damaged unsold or defective clothes. Common greenwashing claims include vague languages, leading or missing information, green buzzwords, not really recyclable.
EMPATHY WORK
Throughout the process of the “Empathy” stage of the human centered design process, we ended up interviewing a total of six people and we conducted a total of two observations. There were many different people that we met, However, there was one particular person that we decided to interview who held a very unique perspective on the idea of greenwashing. This user was a 21 year old college senior who tends to remain very politically active, however, this user does not care about the environment and only cares about the aesthetics of the products that she purchases. Additionally, she also does not trust greenwashing because she feels that it is a way for corporations to upcharge on their products which causes her to feel a sense of distrust with larger corporations who greenwash their products.
Our final POV:
We met a politically active, anti-recycling, female-identifying, college student who doesn't care about the environment. One thing that seems to be important to her is being able to trust product branding. She said she doesn't buy "sustainably labeled" products because she doesn't know if they are a scam. She needs to be able to trust products claiming to be sustainable.
DEFINING THE PROBLEM
After defining the problem that our user did not care about the environment and needed more transparency from the companies, we dug deeper. After asking “why?” five times and reevaluating how someone who did not agree with recycling (the way it is done now in the US) with feeling a tension between feeling guilt while still not shopping sustainably, we realized that a deeper insight was available: that our user was feeling frozen and disillusioned by the way “sustainability” as we know it, is hard to trust.
IDEATION
We brainstormed over 100 ideas using tools like reverse/opposite and how might we. These tools were particularly helpful in generating ideas that were rooted in our POVs and had a clear connection to our research. We casted a wide net on ideas ranging from how we might inspire people to shop green to how we might make it easier to decipher greenwashing labels for consumers . Some ideas were inspired and iterations on other ideas so that there were no barriers in the ideation phase. In addition to all our ideas we also wrote a storyboard, and created moodboards for the label. In the idea board we used orange to indicate ideas that we were especially fond of. The storyboard was especially helpful in solidifying our narrative and main POV.
PROTOTYPING AND TESTING
We created 4 different prototypes based on the ideas we came up with.
TEST AND ITERATE
Based on the feedback that we received in the prototyping and testing phase of our project, we decided to move further with our sustainability rating app prototype. We gave the app the theme and name Red Label (merging idea 3 and idea 4). After using the app to scan a product, an evocative red label with pictures and short explanations of how each product is harmful in a way that is trustworthy to its users will appear. By clicking the label, users can learn about a product in detail, including labor practices, carbon emission, material usage, and alternatives. For the data, we are considering getting them from reputable third-party websites and official government reports (e.g. the green consumer report).
FINAL PRESENTATION
We presented the product in front of Rewilder and the HCD class. We received several useful feedback. One question that was brought up several times was where we are going to get the data. People also wonder how the product is going to nudge a person who doesn’t trust current sustainability practices towards more eco-friendly choices. In other words, what makes Red Label stand out from other sustainability practices? It is also recommended that we should extend our original idea of using adversarial psychology to push people towards more sustainable choices.
Based on the feedback, we did one final round of iteration. We amplified some implicit designs of our product. We added another figma page to the mock app we created, in between the scanning page and the page of product details. The page shows an evocative red label about child labor is “tagged” to the scanned product, which we hypothesized would cause uneasiness for potential buyers of the product. In other words, the app acts like a virtual tag gun on products. In our future test rounds, we will make it clearer that the data come from experts and authentic sources like government or third-party websites. We could also aggregate people's reports of wrongdoings of different brands when we lack official data. We believe that our POV user has deep buried guilt and desire to be sustainable, only hindered by the overwhelming and untrustworthy sustainable information. We hope the authenticity and adversarial psychology effect of Red Label can ease the doubt and guide the users towards changes.