01 — ideation
how it started….
This project was created as part of Project Teams, which is an 8-week designathon hosted by Design @ UCI. Given the prompt "Beyond the Map," our team found a common interest in thrifting… and a common complaint that there were no affordable thrift stores within a walking distance of campus.
College students often face transportation barriers, which leads them to rely on online shopping. However, even when second-hand shopping, shipping fees are not always justifiable for broke students. So, how can UC Irvine students shop second-hand without ever needing to leave campus?
02 — define
user research
2 surveys distributed to UCI students of all majors and years
78 respondents
3 interviews sourced from survey respondents
User Insights
Affordability is crucial for students, but marketplace fees force prices higher.
Communication between buyers and sellers can be difficult.
In-person shopping is inconvenient due to transportation and time limits.
Verifiability of listings and people is difficult to achieve on online marketplaces.
competitive analysis
In total, we analyzed 8 direct competitors. These competitors were selected based on the most popular second-hand shopping platforms identified on our surveys. We defined our MVP features based on what existing apps offered.
To identify a market gap, we dove deeper on 3 competitors: Depop, Facebook Marketplace, and UCI Marketplace. Subsequently, we fond that there is no existing second-hand marketplace that combines a student-specific environment with affordability, convenience, and verifiability.
problem
Students rely on buying secondhand online due to transportation limits, but today’s secondhand apps fail to offer the trust, affordability, and convenience that students need.
How might we design an online secondhand marketplace that feels safe, affordable, and convenient, while offering the reliability of in-person shopping?
solutions
03 — design
user flow
To begin, we created a user flow to understand how users would move through the app. Given how complex we knew this project would, creating a user flow was crucial in keeping our mental modes aligned.
design system
I served as design system lead for this project, where I focused on building modular, reusable elements. With 40+ high fildelity screens in our final product, a centralized system of prototyped components sped up our overall prototyping process.
lofis, midfis, and hifis…
Home Page
For the home page, I leaned into using yellow as a background color, which strengthened our UCI brand and ensured WCAG adherence.
Selling and Event Flow
For the selling and event flow, I prioritized progressive disclosure to break down a complex information entry sequence into manageable steps.
Chat Page
For the chat screens, I moved buttons from the chat body to the header based on user feedback that the chat seemed cluttered and overwhelming.
usability testing
After conducting usability tests, we found that 4/6 users prefer using filters to search. Moving away from the textual search bar, I re-designed our search flow to accommodate for this change.
05 — outcome
demo video
results
At the end of a grueling 8 weeks, ZotShop placed 1st out of 9 teams!
key takeaways
Throughout this process, I learned the importance of conducting strong user research.
We initially struggled to define how ZotShop differed from other online marketplaces. However, after sending out our second survey and conducting interviews, we were able to uncover new pain points.
For instance, some users found it time consuming to arrange pick up time and locations, while others expressed feeling skeptical when meeting strangers to complete a transaction. Subsequently, we were able to make data-backed decisions, such as adding scheduling tools and verification features. These insights ultimately helped us refine our core decisions and choose solutions that better aligned with student needs.
That's all! Thanks for reading :)
