2023
Balancing sustainability storytelling and commercial product journeys
Case overview
At adidas, I contributed to designing a sustainability hub within a global consumer brand setting. The aim was to make sustainability efforts transparent, clear, and credible for consumers—without turning them into marketing hype or disconnected editorial content.
The work focused on developing a content-driven experience that could complement commercial product journeys, helping users understand adidas’s sustainability initiatives while staying connected to real products and choices.
Role
Senior Product Designer (Freelance)
Context
A global consumer brand operating across web and app platforms, with strong commercial and brand-focused requirements.
Product domains
Sustainability hub in adidas’ digital ecosystem.
Focus
Balancing sustainability storytelling with commercial product journeys while maintaining credibility and clarity for users.
Context
adidas functions as a global consumer brand where sustainability becomes more important both internally and externally. Clearly and credibly communicating sustainability efforts is complex, especially in a digital ecosystem mainly designed for product discovery and conversion.
Consumers often see sustainability information as fragmented, abstract, or driven by marketing. Meanwhile, adidas’ web and app experiences focus on products, materials, and shopping choices.
The sustainability hub was created to fit within this ecosystem: not as a separate editorial platform, but as a space where sustainability information can be understood in connection with actual products, materials, and choices.
The Challenge
The main challenge was to convey adidas’ sustainability efforts in a way that felt authentic and impactful, without turning them into just marketing messages or separating them from the product experience.
Sustainability content risks becoming either too vague to be helpful or too promotional to be credible. Within adidas’ digital ecosystem, this created a tension between storytelling, commerce, and trustworthiness.
Focus and approach
The goal was to make sustainability information both useful and credible within an adidas product-focused experience.
The hub was built on an evidence-based framework spanning time: past efforts and milestones, current practices in products and production, and future ambitions.
To prevent sustainability content from feeling like marketing, the approach focused on proof and specificity instead of broad claims, used a clear information hierarchy to support exploration, and integrated product-related context that naturally fit alongside existing web and app journeys.
A key part of the challenge was grounding sustainability messaging in evidence—demonstrating what adidas has already accomplished, what it is doing currently, and where it is heading next.
My contribution
For this project, my contributions included user research, concept development, and UX design for the sustainability hub.
I supported qualitative research by conducting in-depth interviews with users from various backgrounds and locations, examining their perceptions of sustainability, credibility, and fashion brands.
Based on these insights, I designed the UX concept and layout for the sustainability hub, aligning its content structure, hierarchy, and interactions with an evidence-based method. I collaborated closely with legal and internal stakeholder teams to ensure accuracy and consistency.
Additionally, I suggested clear entry points from PLPs, PDPs, and the adidas app, integrating sustainability information into existing product journeys instead of isolating it in a separate destination.
Outcome:
The work resulted in a well-organized sustainability hub that clarified a complex and often abstract subject. Sustainability information was arranged around solid evidence, including past initiatives, current practices, and future goals.
The hub offered a clear way to display sustainability information alongside existing product journeys, connecting content to real products and materials.
The suggested integrations across web, product pages, and app showed how sustainability info could become more visible and accessible within adidas’ broader digital environment.
The adidas sustainability hub
(Click for complete page view)
Sustainability hub home
Our mission
Materials page
Materials detail page
Reduce footprint info page
Our journey - historical timeline