Hridhay Mahesh's Portfolio

OriginTag is a B2B2C traceability platform that pairs an NFC-enabled tracking system embedded in garments that reveals the full sourcing journey, from raw material, to ethical labor, to the final product, with an editorial app experience to turn supply-chain data into premium, consumer-facing narratives. With a tap, consumers access a digital story that verifies authenticity, highlights the story and journey, and builds emotional trust with the brand. Transforming transparency into a rich, branded experience.

Redefining Transparency & Trust in High Fashion

Project Type

Final Capstone Project

Roles

Service Designer, UI Designer, UX Researcher, Video Producer

Tools

Figma, Fig jam, Miro, Notebook LM, Notion

Project Type

Final Capstone Project

Roles

Service Designer, UI Designer, UX Researcher, Video Producer

Tools

Figma, Fig jam, Miro, Notebook LM, Notion

Duration

10 Weeks

Duration

10 Weeks

Context

As my Service Design capstone, OriginTag consolidated research synthesis, blueprinting, evidencing, and pilot/rollout strategy into a scalable platform. Through service blueprints, journey maps, and iterative prototyping, it strengthens brand credibility, supports resale authentication, and gives shoppers instant, verifiable provenance at decision time. The work operationalizes transparency at scale—aligning people, processes, and proof across supply chains and amplifying it through retail and resale ecosystems.

Service Design

UX/UI Design

Business Model Design

Service Design

UX/UI Design

Business Model Development

CHALLENGE

Shoppers can’t see or verify a garment’s real story at the moment of decision.

CHALLENGE

Shoppers can’t see or verify a garment’s real story at the moment of decision.

Origins, processes, and makers stay hidden, breaking trust.

Limited Origin Visibility

Ethics & quality are asserted in marketing but rarely proven in context.

Claims Without Context

Real-time, personalized skin insights aren’t widely available.

Certification Complexity

Product Overview

OriginTag embeds a discreet, waterproof NFC chip beside the garment label. A tap unlocks a secure, cloud-based profile—provenance, partner documents, and certifications, displayed as a visual story. It’s traceability with verifiable data, accessible at anytime.

I followed a human-centered, service-design process moving from evidence to experience, so every interface decision is grounded in real operations, people, and proof.

DISCOVER

Understand the ecosystem, moments of truth, and what “proof” needs to feel like.

DEFINE

Turn raw insight into clear requirements and service goals.

DESIGN

Shape the end-to-end service and the product touchpoints that deliver it.

VALIDATE

Test usability, credibility, and story clarity; refine where it matters.

DELIVER

Package the system for scale across brands and retail/resale contexts.

Discover the ecosystem and trust gaps

Define the ecosystem and trust gaps

Luxury is shifting toward proof. Under-40 buyers now drive most new purchases and increasingly expect verifiable sourcing. Resale culture has normalized authentication and made provenance a purchase driver.

WHO AM I DESIGNING FOR?

Digitally engaged high-fashion consumers (18–45)

From established luxury buyers to avant-garde communities shaped by TikTok/Instagram. They value exclusivity, craft, and ethics—if they can verify them.

Resale participants (buyers & sellers)

Delivers immediate, data-driven feedback on safe versus adverse skin responses.

Brands & supply-chain partners

Who need a credible way to surface sourcing proof to consumers, not just to auditors.

WHY NOW?

Younger luxury buyers are more likely to switch brands based on transparency. 67% of consumers consider material sourcing before purchase. Market growth + resale expansion make provenance both culturally expected and economically relevant.

RESEARCH APPROACH

To understand the current market and how to ground the service in real operations and expectations, I combined expert interviews with secondary research and thematic analysis. This helped me understand how to pinpoint gaps in the current journey, and where issues arise.

Who did I interview?

I interviewed a cross-section of 8 professionals who create, verify, or communicate origins, ensuring the service reflects real operational constraints and consumer expectations.

Ethical-sourcing lead

Selected to surface where greenwashing happens and where fiber-level ethics get lost before the final garment—crucial to defining what “proof” must show.

Luxury sustainability strategist

Chosen to test how transparency fits luxury brand identity and how values translate into an elevated, consumer-facing experience.

Traceability technology founders

Included to understand how to present traceability as aspirational and effortless, an experience, not a compliance portal.

Textile chemistry/Dye-process expert

Consulted to locate environmental and process risks and to learn how to communicate complex steps clearly and credibly.

WHAT I WANTED TO LEARN

Where trust breaks

Led us to surface verified “proof tiles” above the fold with plain-language summaries.

How much story vs. data

Drove the chaptered journey (Raw → Dye/Process → Assembly → Brand) and progressive disclosure to avoid text walls.

What “premium” feels like in use

Validated the NFC scan ritual with QR fallback and tightened load/performance expectations at the point of decision.

WHAT I HEARD & WHAT IT SHOWED ME

INSIGHTS TO IDEAS

Consumers want stories, not just specs. They desire a clear understanding of the materials being used as well as the process. From the start with raw material, to the production steps in developing the product, such as who’s doing it, and where it’s being done.

A garment’s history gets confusing.

Map out the broken link between values and visibility.

I mapped the end-to-end journey, store, ownership, resale, and support—to expose trust gaps and design the right moments to fix them.

Current

RAW

MATERIAL

Brand

Customer

???

Future State

RAW

MATERIAL

Fair Labor & ETHICAL Sourcing

INFORMED CuStomer

Sustainable Processing & Dyeing

VERIFIED PRODUCTION

Brand

Certified Farming & Milling

Transparent process

Unclear process

Legend

CLARITY TO CRITERIA

These insights set the foundation for our requirements, personas, and a measurable definition of success. Understanding the current landscape and where pain points arise helped me map out where service needs can be implemented for users.

Define the end-to-end service architecture

Define the end-to-end

service architecture

What’s really driving behavior?
Observing what matters to users

Even with sustainability trending, most brands can’t back up their claims. Consumers increasingly expect data and authenticity, especially in high-end fashion.

of luxury consumers feel let down by material quality despite price

only

of brands trace materials beyond Tier 2 suppliers

consider material sourcing before purchase

SYNTHESIS

These signals reframed traceability as a service promise: make provenance legible in one scan, credible at a glance, and portable across ownership and resale. The service must balance evidence (issuer, timestamp, source) with emotion (a calm, premium narrative).

STRATEGY TO STRUCTURE

With the promise, principles, and requirements set, I can blueprint the service, connecting front-stage moments to the backstage systems that make them true. This will help with conceptualizing how we connect the garment’s history with users, to create a story.

Where is the service is positioned in the ecosystem?
Let’s place it.

I ran a SWOT to locate strengths/weaknesses across front-stage touch-points and backstage operations.

Where is the service is positioned in the ecosystem?
Let’s place it.

I ran a SWOT to locate strengths/weaknesses across front-stage touch-points and backstage operations.

Using Blue Ocean to reframe the offering, eliminate friction, raise evidence, and create a premium scan-to-story ritual amongst competitors.

Lastly, I mapped the service’s position to place the solution idea in the consumer-facing, evidence-forward space-linking proof to experience.

Using Blue Ocean to reframe the offering, eliminate friction, raise evidence, and create a premium scan-to-story ritual amongst competitors.

Lastly, I mapped the service’s position to place the solution idea in the consumer-facing, evidence-forward space-linking proof to experience.

IDEATION CONCEPT

Design the scan-to-story experience

In order to tell a story, there needs to be structure and trust, but I also needed to understand the entire ecosystem. This would include all the stakeholders that would interact with the service on the front-end alongside the backstage.

MAPPING THE ECOSYSTEM

Mapping the system around the high-fashion user—boutique associates, brand ops, suppliers, certifiers, logistics, resale—showed me that “transparency” is earned backstage before it’s felt front-stage.

I learned to assign ownership to evidence (who issues it, when it updates), keep status honest (valid/expiring/unavailable), and design consent that travels. This reframed the brief from “make it look clear” to “make it be clear,” and set the guardrails for the mockups.

SERVICE BLUEPRINT

Translating the ecosystem into a service blueprint made the work concrete: I could see where customer actions meet frontstage UI, and where backstage verification, data pipelines, and partner SLAs actually carry the trust. Laying the journey across lanes (customer actions → frontstage → backstage → support systems → evidence) forced clear ownership—who issues proof, when it updates, how fallbacks trigger, and exposed weak handoffs before they became UX debt.

This alignment now guides the mockups that follow: every screen must reflect a real backstage capability, every status state must map to a system event, and every proof tile must have a source that can be checked.

SITE MAP & USER FLOW

Translating the system into routes gave the product a simple narrative: Home → Scan → Story (Explore/Journey) → Proof → Impact → Archive → Resale, with History as re-entry and calm fallbacks (QR, issuer status) baked in.

I learned that trust lives in tiny, repeatable choices—proof tiles above the fold, plain-language explainers, consistent issuer/date patterns. With roles and routes aligned, the next Design Mockups bring that grammar to life, screen by screen.

UI WIREFRAMES

TOP-LEVEL SCREENS

GARMENT STORY

Validate the service

solution concept

Is the story clear?

It is, when told simply
and backed by proof.

Is the story clear?

It is, when told simply
and backed by proof.

To see how user’s would respond to the service solution, I tested the prototype with user’s within the demographic.

Early stage users

Total data points

Feedback Type

Highlights & Feedback

TAKEAWAYS

User testing taught me that clarity beats volume. The scan-to-story ritual felt “premium” and intuitive when issuer + timestamp were visible up top and a QR fallback was obvious. Proof landed best as plain-language tiles; long certification docs were skipped unless visually prompted. Readability and curation mattered more than I expected—bigger type/buttons and a short note explaining the Explore tabs reduced friction. Finally, users valued ongoing utility (Archive/Resale) more than rewards, reinforcing that trust comes from consistent evidence and useful continuity, not perks.

Introducing, OriginTag

OriginTag is an NFC-powered garment tracking service that lets you tap any garment to see its complete journey, from raw materials and processing to ethical labor and brand finish—backed by issuer-verified proof.

Onboarding

SIMPLE ACCOUNT SIGN-UP

Create an account or continue to log into your profile. Privacy is on by default, so nothing is public unless you choose.

Home

PERSONAL HUB

See your latest garment, a clear Scan entry, and stay updated with brands you follow, so you can pick up the story or start a new one instantly.

Journey

STORIES & HISTORY

Keep up with the latest news within the fashion world, and track your past purchases to build your closet’s story.

Scan

START YOUR JOURNEY

Grab your garment, and hold your phone near the tag to begin. Once your NFC tag is scanned, your item is identified, and you’re immersed in your story.

Process

SOURCING INFORMATION

Go through every step of the sourcing and development process for all your garments. From the Raw Material Origin, to the Processing & Dyeing, Assembly & Craft, and the Final Packaging & Brand.

Explore the details of each step, and how your garment was treated and brought to life. See the location, information on the process, the details specific to your garment, the highlights of the process and it’s impact, and view the certification to ensure your garment was made honestly and ethnically.

Overview

SEE YOUR IMPACT

Get a summary of your garment’s production journey, and all the verifiable sourcing information, seeing it’s overall impact.