One customer problem. One product wedge. No feature parade.
A product case about making hidden costs visible before commitment, reducing decision friction, and earning customer trust one useful interaction at a time.
Original promise
See your money through the lens of sustainability.
Green Filter / transparent costs / checkout-speed decisions
A sustainability companion that helps people make greener shopping and finance choices with practical, real-time guidance.
The product thesis
If a cost matters, show it before the customer commits. No fine print. No separate research task.
Customer evidence before product opinion
Ziran gathered quantitative attitudes in Chinese, then prototype testing moved into the Momo shopping flow. That exposed the gap between what customers care about and what they can actually act on under time pressure.
Choose an animal. Then reveal the actual trade-off.
63
questions
Money, shopping, trust, AI, climate anxiety, and the trade-offs people make when the stated value meets the actual checkout.
5-7
minutes
Short enough to complete between classes. Long enough to separate what customers say matters from what wins their attention.
100%
anonymous
The goal was honest customer evidence, not a polished performance of being environmentally responsible.
Evidence → decision → customer impact
Price, photos, and reviews dominated attention. Sustainability information hidden away from the purchase controls was often missed.
No hidden impact and no separate research task. Show one plain-language signal where the customer is already comparing value.
63% wanted to identify the most polluting products, and testers repeatedly chose Find Alternatives over open-ended exploration.
Keep a one-tap comparison under Add to Cart. Chat becomes the secondary Why? layer, not the product's front door.
Health and safety scored 4.20 across personas, ahead of climate and pollution at 4.00. ESG language created distance rather than clarity.
Lead with ingredients, origin, labor conditions, and safety. Carbon detail follows once the product has earned attention.
48% could not name a trusted brand, and students questioned whose interests shaped the AI-generated information.
Every claim needs a source, date, confidence level, and a direct route to the underlying company or product evidence.
96% used smartphones. Slow Wi-Fi, old laptops, and dying batteries disrupted testing before the product problem even appeared.
Ship a lightweight decision layer with progressive detail. The useful answer should arrive before customer patience expires.
The survey used an animal guide to create warmth, while participants still needed to understand what was automated and uncertain.
Keep the character. Label the AI clearly. Never trade trust for the illusion of human certainty.
Customers > roadmap debate
“One command at a time is enough.”
“It gives me more choices.”
“I just look at the price.”
The narrowed product job
Shopping is the wedge.
Solve the urgent customer question first: What is the real cost, can I trust the explanation, and what is the better alternative? Saving and investing come after repeat value and trust.
The rollout sequence
Flag the relevant risk, explain it in one sentence, and show a credible alternative that still respects price and quality.
Turn isolated choices into a lightweight monthly record. Not a guilt dashboard. A useful memory of money saved and impact reduced.
Once customers trust the evidence and return for the decision layer, connect spending patterns to companies, governance, and investment choices.
The point, with receipts
Green Filter should do for product impact what transparent financial products do for exchange rates: expose the real cost before the customer commits.
Project record
The former homepage case study and the original project record now live together here, including the research evidence, live product, video, and interface archive.
675
valid survey responses
32
qualitative interviews
32
prototype tests across 7 universities
100+
self-testing sessions
Product intent
Help young adults understand how everyday purchases shape both their financial future and environmental impact.
Open Green Filter ↗Research artifact 01
Research artifact 02
Research artifact 03
Featured project video
Interface archive
Build from this
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