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Building an interactive Ethical Fashion Guide for BMS World Mission.
Over the past few weeks we've been working with BMS World Mission to create an interactive web application that enables users to explore the ethical performance of hundreds of well-known fashion brands.
Knowing where our clothes come from and how those responsible are being treated isn't always easy to understand. Behind well-known high street brands are complex global supply chains of manufacturers, suppliers and millions of workers. But for many of us, finding trustworthy information on how these companies operate can prove challenging.
BMS World Mission's Ethical Fashion Guide brings together extensive research on how fashion companies handle workers' rights, supply chain transparency and environmental sustainability.
With 336 brands assessed across 46 questions, there's a lot of useful information to get through. Our aim for the project was to make this information easy to search, explore and understand, in a more engaging way than a long report. And we built a bespoke Ethical Fashion Brand Checker, hosted on the charity's existing website.
How the Brand Checker works
The application enables visitors to search for their favourite fashion brands and find out how they compare against the guide's ethical assessment criteria.
Users can search the guide by brand or parent company and filter by clothing category, as well as sort by scores. All of which work in real time without the need for a page refresh.
Each brand is scored out of 100, alongside having a colour-coded score to see how it compares to other companies.
Opening the brand profile shows more information on the brand's performance across the five categories of policies and governance, supply chain tracing, supplier relationships, worker empowerment and environmental sustainability.
Profiles explain the findings and if available, show a comparison with any previous assessment.
An important part of the project was to not just share information, but to enable those that visited the site to take action.
The Speak Out feature enables users to contact fashion companies directly, using prepared email messages based on the brand's performance.
It's a simple feature, but one that enables a campaigning tool for those who want to take the information published and do something with it.
Designed for mobile first
A key focus of this project was around mobile usability, making sure that those looking to research a clothing company can do so easily, whether they're shopping in their local town or online. This played a large part in the design of the application, from the prominent search function and simplified filters, to the layout of the brand profile cards and their supporting information.
Bespoke development, integrated into the existing website
The application has been developed using Laravel and Livewire, integrated directly into BMS World Mission's existing Statamic site. We wanted to build something bespoke to the website rather than through another service or third-party plugin.
This means the experience of searching for brands and exploring ethical performance can be customised to how the rest of the website works.
Behind the scenes, structured research data powers the brand directory, scores, individual brand profiles and tailored email. It also provides a framework for updating the guide in future as new research is published.
Helping charities do more with their website
The Ethical Fashion Brand Checker is an example of how charities can do more with their website than just share information.
BMS World's guide had already done the important work of gathering and analysing the research on ethical fashion. We worked to make sure that information was published in an accessible and engaging way, which would in turn support the charity's wider audience.
You can view the guide at on the BMS World Mission site