The Brand Behind The Garment

Tega Collective produces small-batch, handmade garments with deep cultural and artisanal roots from Adivasi communities in India. While Niha, the founder, does an incredible job at actively sharing artisan stories and sustainability efforts through both her’s and the brand’s social platforms and website, the storytelling primarily exists at the point of discovery and doesn’t directly carry forward once a garment is purchased. This creates a post-purchase gap, a disconnect between the dedication and tradition handwoven in the clothing and the customer’s experience of owning it.

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What Happens After Checkout?

Customers want an authentic connection with the product they purchase. Once a transaction is complete, product information isn’t always easily accessible or transparent in one single location. After purchase, customers may want to:

     1. Revisit the story behind the garment, beyond social media marketing content

     2. Understand who made their clothing and where materials came from


     3. Access detailed and reliable care instructions for their garment

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     4. Feel confident that their purchase aligns with the brand’s sustainability values

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Constraints That Shape a Small Business

Exploring Digital Product Passports

Digital Product Passports (DPPs) are being positioned as the next layer of infrastructure for product transparency in fashion, driven largely by upcoming regulation and the need for brands to maintain consistent, traceable product data over time. DPPs function as a form of digital identity for physical goods. In this project's context, a specific garment is linked to data about its origin, materials, and overall lifecycle. Positioned as the next layer of infrastructure for product transparency in fashion, DPPs are intended to enable 'reduce, reuse, recycle'. However, much of the current DPP talk circulates around data and compliance and not how users actually engage with the information after purchase. Most Digital ID implementations require enterprise-level infrastructure that small brands rarely have. While in many cases, even when DPPs are QR accessible, the experience functions as a static page rather than a post purchase journey that is user friendly enough to continue a relationship with the product.

This creates a gap: Small brands share compelling stories and values, but lack a scalable mechanism for a garment's digital identity to live with the product beyond the point of purchase. This project explores the core idea of a Digital Garment ID and how it can be translated into a lightweight post-purchase system that preserves meaning and remains operationally sustainable for a small brand like Tega.

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Patterns Across Sustainable Fashion Brands

Using competitive analysis, I examined how sustainability-driven fashion brands approach sustainability storytelling and digital product experiences across the customer journey, specifically after purchase. While brands like Sheep Inc. offer access to garment information through a QR linked microsite, others primarily rely on pre-purchase website content or collection narratives that do not persist once a garment is owned. Most notably, I found that existing DPP approaches tend to prioritize either enterprise depth or aesthetics but rarely both in a way that is focused on the post-purchase user experience. This revealed a gap for small brands like Tega Collective: the need for a garment-specific system that carries brand values forward without requiring complex or costly infrastructure.

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User Interviews

To study real post-purchase behavior, I conducted five semi-structured interviews with consumers interested in sustainable fashion, including those familiar with Indo-Western brands. The interviews explored methods customers use to discover brand stories, what information they inquire about after purchase, and where pain points arise once a garment is owned.

I framed the interviews to explore broader questions around care and long-term engagement with clothing rather than testing a specific technical concept. Participants consistently described a disconnect between the brand values communicated before purchase and the information available after purchase. While many expressed interest in learning the stories of who made their clothes and how materials were sourced, this information is harder to access once a transaction was complete. Care instructions were frequently described as buried or easy to forget.

Several participants also emphasized the importance of convenience for post-purchase engagement. While transparency and sustainability is valued, participants were unwilling to download an additional app or navigate through complex steps to access product information.

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What The Research Made Clear

The Question That Anchored the Work

Using the insights I gathered throughout my research methods, I defined the problem with one core framing question. This question intentionally reframed the problem away from marketing or discovery and towards ownership over time. The system needed to be a post-purchase experience, garment-specific, and feasible for a small brand to maintain.

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The Post-Purchase Journey

To translate the framing question into a concrete user experience, I mapped the post-purchase user flow for the DPP interaction. The flow begins once the customer purchases the garment and scans the QR code label attached to it. This action opens a garment-specific microsite that serves as the digital product passport. Customers can explore product information such as the artisanal story, material and dye origins, sustainability impact, and care or repair tips.

Most importantly, the flow supports repeat engagement. Allowing the same QR-linked experience to be accessed repeatedly shows that the system supports ongoing use across the garment’s lifecycle. This also reinforces the idea that transparency and care should continue with the garment beyond checkout.

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A System Built to Grow

In addition to the customer experience, I considered how the system could scale sustainably for a small brand. This was approached as a system flow, not a user flow, focused on feasibility rather than implementation detail.

The Digital Product Passport was designed around a reusable content structure that could be applied across garments and collections. By using a consistent template—while allowing garment-specific content to be updated independently—the brand can expand the system over time without redesigning the experience or introducing additional technical complexity.

This approach ensures that the system remains maintainable as the brand grows, supporting long-term transparency without creating operational burden.

Laying the Foundation

I focused the wireframes on defining a clear information hierarchy for a post-purchase Digital Product Passport. My goal was to separate orientation from exploration. First, by grounding users in the garment they own, then allowing them to intentionally navigate deeper into specific details.

The landing state of the DPP prioritizes garment recognition through a strong visual and concise product description, ensuring users understand what the Digital ID refers to. Below this, an “Explore Garment” navigation establishes the primary interaction model, enabling users to navigate between Story, Materials, Care, and Impact by clicking each card button without overwhelming the screen.

Card-based layouts were used to compartmentalize content, allowing each section to function independently while remaining part of a cohesive system. This approach supported both scannability and revisit behavior.

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Visualizing the Post-Purchase Experience

I translated the wireframes into high fidelity mockups to structure the templates into a visual language aligned with Tega Collective’s existing brand identity. Color, typography, and iconography were applied with restraint to maintain continuity with the brand while clearly differentiating functional sections within the Digital ID.

Soft color-coded cards help users distinguish between types of information. Subtle shadows, rounded corners, and generous spacing were used to create a calm, tactile reading experience appropriate for post-purchase engagement.

Interaction states and hierarchy were refined to emphasize clarity over novelty. Buttons were designed to remain persistent during scrolling, reinforcing section navigation, while card layouts support progressive disclosure of information. The final mockups balance emotional storytelling with practical utility, ensuring the Digital ID feels both meaningful and easy to use—reflecting the values of longevity, care, and transparency embedded in the garment itself.

Testing for Simplicity

To evaluate whether the DPP was intuitive and comprehendible in a real post-purchase context, I conducted informal usability testing with 5 participants unfamiliar with the project. The testing focused on first-time use after scanning a QR code, navigation between sections, and clarity of purpose.

Testing reinforced that even well-considered designs benefit from external perspectives, especially in post-purchase experiences where users are not actively shopping and expectations differ from traditional product pages. User task success improved from 80% to 100% after iterations.

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Key Findings & Iterations

A Click-Through Post-Purchase Experience

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Outcomes at the System Level

This project resulted in a lightweight Digital Product Passport system designed specifically for small, ethical fashion brands balancing transparency, storytelling, and long-term maintainability. Rather than treating transparency as static disclosure, the system reframes Digital ID as an ongoing relationship between the garment, the wearer, and the brand.

• Established a post-purchase Digital ID experience that allows garment-specific information—story, materials, care, and impact—to persist beyond the point of sale.

• Designed a modular, QR-linked microsite system that can scale across collections without requiring complex infrastructure or enterprise-level tooling.

• Shifted sustainability communication from pre-purchase marketing content to post-purchase utility, supporting care, longevity, and informed ownership.

• Created a repeatable content structure that enables brands to update or expand garment information over time without redesigning the experience.

• Laid groundwork for future circular features such as repair history, resale, reuse while remaining feasible for a small business with limited technical resources.

Lessons from Designing a Small, Scalable System

This project reinforced that effective storytelling in digital systems is not about volume, but about continuity. While much of the research around Digital Product Passports emphasizes compliance, data standards, or traceability, designing this experience shifted my focus towards how information is actually encountered, remembered, and reused by people over time. The challenge was not deciding what information to include, but understanding when, how, and why someone would return to it after purchase.

Working within the constraints of a small, resource-limited brand required constant trade-offs between ambition and feasibility. Features that felt compelling in theory—such as complex impact metrics or advanced technologies—were intentionally scaled back in favor of clarity, trust, and maintainability. This process sharpened my ability to recognize when design decisions add meaningful value versus when they introduce unnecessary complexity.

The project also deepened my understanding of systems design as a form of stewardship. Designing a Digital ID is not just about creating an interface, but about shaping how responsibility, care, and ownership are communicated over time. By centering post-purchase moments—washing, repairing, revisiting the story—the system reframes sustainability as an ongoing practice rather than a marketing claim.

Ultimately, this work strengthened my ability to design within real-world constraints while still thinking long-term. It reinforced the importance of designing systems that can evolve gradually, respect the realities of small brands, and prioritize human understanding over technical spectacle.

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