Table of Contents
The Problem
Sustainify is a youth-driven platform empowering the next generation to take meaningful action on sustainability through education, engagement, and community.
It addresses the disconnect between young people and sustainable living by combining:
ESG learning
Responsible consumption
Social impact initiatives
—all within one accessible digital ecosystem.
Through interactive tools, curated product stories, and rewards for eco-conscious actions, Sustainify makes sustainability easy, engaging, and actionable.
Research Approach
To create an experience that truly resonated with a youth audience, I combined research insights with iterative design exploration. The goal is to design an interface that feels intuitive, educational, and action-driven, grounded in real behaviours and expectations.
Competitive Analysis
I analyzed Sustainify, Carbon Wallet, and Zero2 across core features like education, rewards, and UX. Sustainify stood out for combining interactive learning, product discovery, and eco-rewards—a gap not fully addressed by competitors. These insights shaped our all-in-one platform direction.
User Interviews
Conducted small-scale interviews with potential users to gather direct feedback on pain points, feature expectations, and their motivations behind making sustainable choices.
Journey Mapping
Mapped Tony’s step-by-step experience revealed from discovering the platform to completing an assessment or earning a reward—helping to define key moments of clarity, friction, and delight.
Literature Review & Papers
Conducted a high‑level review of academic and industry publications on sustainable product design, consumer behavior, and energy management. This helped us align with proven frameworks and understand emerging best practices.
Persona Development
Synthesized research into clear s persona Tony Green which is a 23-year-old environmental consultant who cares about sustainability but struggles to find reliable ESG products and clear guidance. He needs a platform that simplifies product discovery, educates quickly, and rewards good choices.
Key Finding
Market Validation & Opportunity
Quantitative research revealed a strong, motivated audience for Sustainify:
93% of Hong Kong youth express concern for sustainability
70% are willing to pay more for eco-friendly products
This confirms both the emotional drive and financial willingness to adopt a platform that simplifies sustainable living—validating Sustainify’s role as an all-in-one hub for ESG education, responsible consumption, and social impact.
User Pain Points & Competitive Gaps
Qualitative insights from competitive analysis, personas, and journey mapping revealed three core friction areas:
- information overload ,
- trust deficits
- fragmented experiences.
Users feel overwhelmed by disparate sustainability resources, existing competitors either focus narrowly on carbon tracking or gamified rewards, leaving no solution that unites learning, vetted product discovery, and community engagement in one seamless flow.
Design‑Driven Strategic Solution
Our design proposal directly addresses these opportunities by delivering a guided onboarding experience, a curated directory with transparent impact metrics, and a gamified rewards engine that ties every eco‑action to tangible outcomes. By consolidating ESG education (“Learn”), credible product stories (“Surf”), and actionable volunteer opportunities (“Serve”) into a cohesive digital ecosystem, Sustainify needs to reduce friction, builds trust, and drives sustained engagement—uniquely positioning it to capture and grow a highly motivated youth market.
Design Principles
After synthesizing our research insights, we defined four guiding principles to shape every aspect of the redesign — ensuring the solution is intuitive, impactful, and built to scale.
Simplicity
Streamline every flow with clear labels, step‑by‑step guidance, and minimal cognitive load.
Actionability
Establish a unified visual language (typography, iconography, UI patterns) across all features.
Scalability
Infuse Sustainify’s personality through its mascot, gamified rewards, and delightful micro‑interactions that surprise and motivate.
Early Exploration
After synthesizing our research insights (personas, journey maps, competitive audit), I kicked off Sustainify’s design by sketching dozens of rapid paper concepts for each core user journey. These hand‑drawn flows let me quickly explore information hierarchy, navigation patterns, and key touchpoints (onboarding, product comparison, rewards redemption) without getting bogged down in visual details.
I then distilled the strongest concepts into a set of low‑fidelity wireframes in Figma. Each screen focused on minimizing cognitive load (clear calls‑to‑action, progressive disclosure), reinforcing brand consistency (typography, icon placement), and introducing our playful mascot as a guide through empty states and micro‑interactions.
An internal usability test on these wireframes highlighted opportunities to simplify onboarding steps, surface impact metrics more prominently, and clarify reward mechanics — feedback that directly informed our next round of mid‑fidelity prototypes.
Final Deliverables
ESG Product Directory
The ESG Product Directory is a unified, filterable catalogue that helps users discover vetted sustainable products based on carbon footprint, material origin, and social impact certifications.
To align its structure with how users think, I conducted a card-sorting exercise with 15 target users. This validated our category labels and information hierarchy.
Personalized Profile Dashboard
Through competitive benchmarking of top loyalty programs—like Starbucks Rewards, Duolingo streaks, and Nike Run Club badges—we found that bite-sized wins and visible progress are essential to building lasting habits.
Applying these insights, Sustainify’s Dashboard features:
A dynamic progress bar showing cumulative carbon savings
Tiered achievement badges unlocked at key milestones
A streak tracker for consecutive eco-actions
Real-time feedback (e.g., “You’re 10% closer to your next badge!”)
Contextual nudges (e.g., “Complete one more eco-action today to level up”)
Interactive ESG Education Hub
The Education Hub turns complex ESG topics into bite-sized, gamified lessons—using quizzes, video snippets, and animated feedback to keep learning engaging and memorable.
In prototype testing with 10 users, this approach led to a noticeable boost in retention and revealed:
Which content formats resonated most (e.g., micro-quizzes, short videos)
Ideal lesson lengths for sustained attention and completion
Design System
The Sustainify Design System is a lightweight, purpose-built toolkit that brings visual consistency, scalability, and brand credibility to every touchpoint.
It includes:
A cohesive color palette, anchored in our signature green hues
A clear typographic hierarchy, from bold headlines to concise body text
A standardized spacing scale for balanced, responsive layouts
Reusable components—buttons, form fields, cards, and iconography—are designed to be modular, accessible, and instantly recognizable, often featuring our mascot where appropriate.
Impacts
◤ Community & Social Impact
Since launch, Sustainify volunteers have contributed 143 hours of service, directly benefiting 2,340 community members through charitable events and outreach programs. These efforts have generated in donations for partner NGOs—demonstrating tangible, measurable social impact for youth‑driven sustainability initiatives .
◤ Educational Engagement
Through Sustainify’s interactive ESG learning modules and “Share” programs, thousands of young users have completed bite‑sized sustainability lessons and eco‑action challenges, turning abstract concepts into concrete behaviors. This early traction validates our platform’s ability to convert interest into action, fostering long‑term sustainability literacy among Hong Kong’s youth.
◤ Partnership & Ecosystem Growth
Sustainify has onboarded multiple strategic partners—including sustainable brands, NGOs, and educational institutions—amplifying our reach and credibility. By uniting stakeholders around a single digital ecosystem, we’ve created a scalable model for collaboration that not only drives platform adoption but also multiplies collective impact across environmental and social fronts.
Some Other UIUX Works
@designed by AddieCheung 2024