Sustainable living is often made to feel complicated, confusing or out of reach. When people want to make a better choice, they are frequently met with greenwashing, fragmented information and brands that are difficult to verify.
I saw an opportunity to make that experience more positive. Candella would help people discover local businesses doing genuinely useful work, and give those businesses a clearer way to reach customers who cared about sustainability.
I founded Candella and led it from an early idea through research, brand development, product design and launch across iOS, Android and Web.
My role
- Defined the product vision, brand identity and tone of voice
- Led UX design, UI design and the platform build in Adalo
- Managed App Store and Google Play submissions
- Established early user research and roadmap prioritisation
- Recruited interns and brought in a co-founder to lead marketing and partnerships
The challenge
The climate crisis can feel like a problem too large for any individual to influence. Like many people, I was frustrated by the constant bad news, the pace of government action and the feeling that sustainable living was only accessible to people with more time or money.
I wanted to find better places to shop, but I did not know where to start.
When I first moved to Melbourne, I found that shopping at local markets was often cheaper, more enjoyable and far less wasteful. The businesses were there, but discovering them required effort and trust. There was no simple way to understand why one option was genuinely better than another.
Candella began with a straightforward question:
Could we make sustainable choices easier to discover and more rewarding to act on?
As a self-funded product, the practical challenge was deciding how much to build before we had evidence that people would use it. I needed to create something credible enough to test the idea without spending months building the perfect version.
The approach
I began with market research, user conversations and a review of the conscious consumer space. The goal was to understand how people currently found sustainable businesses, what stopped them taking action and what would make the experience feel useful rather than judgemental.
That research shaped Candella's identity. The product needed to feel optimistic, accessible and practical. It would celebrate better choices rather than make people feel guilty for imperfect ones.
I designed the first end-to-end experience and built the MVP in Adalo. Choosing a no-code platform was a deliberate product decision. It gave me geolocation and a single build for iOS, Android and Web, allowing us to reach users and learn more quickly.
There were trade-offs. The first version of category filtering was less flexible than I wanted, and some ideas had to wait. I accepted those constraints because launching a useful product and gathering real feedback mattered more than polishing features that had not yet been validated.
As the proposition developed, I brought in a co-founder with complementary experience in business development and sustainability verification. We worked with local brands and social media interns to build the directory, test our message and create early awareness.
The outcome
- Launched the Candella MVP across iOS, Android and Web
- Listed more than 150 sustainable businesses across Victoria
- Secured more than 30 brand partnerships, including Zero Co
- Received positive early feedback on the product's accessibility and clarity of purpose
- Validated interest in a coalition loyalty program
- Learned that users wanted more transparency about why a business qualified as sustainable, which shaped the next stage of the content and verification strategy
What I learned
Candella taught me how to launch lean without stripping the personality out of a product.
The constraint of building with no-code tools forced useful decisions. I had to separate what was essential to the proposition from what was simply attractive to build. That meant accepting some imperfect interactions in return for getting the product into people's hands.
It also reinforced the value of bringing in people with strengths different from my own. The product became more credible when product design, sustainability knowledge, partnerships and community-building worked together.
Most importantly, the project showed me that early validation is not only about whether people like an idea. The questions and doubts they raise, particularly around trust and transparency, often reveal the more important product problem underneath it.