Summary
Unless You Affect Revenue Companies Won't Care
We took on this project to find a simple way to advance worker’s rights in third world countries. Many companies claim to adhere to strict policies about worker’s rights and yet reports keep uncovering cases of child labor, forced labor and diminished worker’s rights among suppliers linked to major companies. By creating a digital solution that would aim to effect the bottom line we aimed to motivate these same corporations to make drastic changes to how their products are made.
Make It Simple & Effective
Over the course of 48-hours, our team designed and built a chrome extension to help consumers learn about how products are made. Better than a stand alone app, once downloaded, the extension works passively on the back end of ecommerce websites, allowing users to maintain their current online shopping habits while still actively making ethical purchasing decisions.
“How Can I Purchase Clothing Made Ethically If I Can’t Find The Information?”
My research showed that if consumers have a product’s ethical information right in front of them (e.g., whether it was made using child labor), they will factor the information into their decision making — but they will not go out of their way to seek it out. With this in mind, I designed a user flow that could easily be incorporated into their already existing shopping patterns.
Easy To Understand Grading System
I wanted a grading system for companies that was simple to understand without any instruction or explanation. Using data pulled from the Department of Labor, OSHA and Fair Trade Commission, I built a scoring rubric measuring companies across three areas: child labor, forced labor, and worker’s rights. Within each area a company was judged upon whether or not they had a policy protecting its workers and then if it had mechanisms in place to monitor this policy at their factories as well as contractors and sub contractors.
I designed a series of icons which looked like letter grades one would receive in school. The icon would appear in the upper right hand corner of each product module on a search result page. This way, a user can quickly see if a company is doing a good or bad job of protecting its workers.
Info & Interactions
If the user decides to click on the icon an overlay pops up on the screen with a more detailed breakdown of why a company received its score. I designed the wire frames and then final design to be simple and easy to understand quickly so as not to interrupt the shopping experience.
Knowledge Is Power
My team members and I presented the extension as part of the 2016 HACK UCSC competition where we won 2nd place in our category as well as the overall People’s Choice Award. Next steps for Reveal include expanding the database of companies rated to include not only clothing companies but electronics and home goods as well.