How to design a digital product passport

In the Summer of 2026, Cirpass 2, the European Commission funded initiative entrusted with answering all questions on digital product passports, came out with a study on DPP design.

The big debate over DPP-design has fallen into two schools.

• The ‘keep it straight’ school. Add only EU-compliant sustainability information. No marketing. No branding. No hype.
• The ‘wild west’ approach. Dazzling digital pages where DPP information is in there somewhere but it’s hard to find it among all the discount offers and sales conversion tactics.

Neither is particularly good and the Cirpass2 saw this directly in their report. They looked at four scenarios for designing DPP’s.

Version 1 - The 'keep it straight' version

In this version, the EU sets a law and says you can only show this specific information and nothing else. It’s great, honest information and everyone’s page looks the same so it’s easy to regulate. But it’s boring and the EU knows it. Energy labelling regulations show scanning rates as low as 13% when they direct to very straightforward information. “It demonstrates that regulatory data access alone does not drive adoption,” reads the Cirpass2 report. “It is therefore critical that the DPP interface is designed to genuinely serve consumers, not merely satisfy compliance obligations.”

So, our friends at Cirpass 2 took it up a notch. Version 2 Start with the regulatory information but allow a link to the brand story and marketing information.

Cirpass2 liked this approach better. It would make DPP’s instantly recognisable with a standardised page that people scanned to. At the same time, you can provide a balance between compliance information and product experience. They’re not artificially separated but there’s still clear boundaries. But this still takes a user to a fairly dull first page and there are limited design options.

Enter Version 3, the winner Version 3

In this version you start with the information you think a consumer wants first and foremost and ideally some of this information nudges people in the right direction when it comes to a circular economy. So, make spare parts, repairs and second-hand sales sexy and put this on the first page with other useful brand information and then create a clear link to the digital product passport information. In other words, you differentiate from the first page and the digital product passport page that continues to provide the EU-regulated information. In this version, you now have attractive pages that people will want to scan. The disadvantage is that the DPP is now another click away.

Version 4

The final version is that ‘wild west ‘ approach where the DPP-related information is there, somewhere, but its unregulated and hard to find. In the end, there’s a huge risk that this just becomes a big greenwashing exercise and won’t turn the needle on circularity. It looks great but it’s purely commercial and defeats the purpose.

The winner then is version three above. It’s also good to know that the EU is 100% behind using DPP’s to at least provide a branded experience and to give the consumer something with every scan. DPP’s have to actually add value to a consumer and not just force them to read. On top of that Cirpass2 came up with the following recommendations:

1. A common approach to consumer UI/UX across product groups (possibly with the exception of products that won’t be sanned by consumers)
2. The DPP UI/UX should be similar regardless of the mechanism used to get there
3. Conformity to accessibiltiy standards should be mandatory
4. To avoid information overload – go with the most imprtant information first
5. Experiments should be run to test consumer responses to different options
6. DPP rules in first sale scenarios may need to be different than with resale scenarios
7. Consumer awareness campaigns will be needed to support DPP when it comes out.

There are in fact several commercial advantages if you do this right.You can make DPP’s good for your business and the environment.

If you want to design your first digital product passport, then get in touch

as this is one of our core strengths. With seasoned marketing experts in-house, and a team of IT professionals, we focus on making it easy to create EU-compliant DPP’s that enhance the consumer experience.