Phase 1: Research

In order to determine my users’ needs, I conducted six user interviews with members of my targeted demographic base: young adults, age 18-23 with some experience shopping secondhand. From my interviews, a couple big trends emerged.

1. Users usually felt some sort of guilt shopping fast fashion, noting that shopping secondhand made them feel like a good person.

2. Users thought of their secondhand purchases as works of art that came with their own stories.

3. Alternatively to shopping secondhand, users would donate or sell their unwanted clothes but noted that pain points in this experience were a long wait time and small reimbursement.

4. Most interviewees mentioned how friends of theirs had opened up informal shops on Instagram solely dedicated to selling their clothes. These accounts would be followed by their friends and thus, the seller could offer special delivery methods like free delivery within 15 minutes or drop-off to the buyer’s house.

Users were primarily motivated by environmental consciousness, pursuit of one’s personal style, and a general practice of frugality. In identifying a problem statement, users needed a way to build out their personal style in a sustainable and seamless way without overspending. Putting my findings together, I created a primary persona of Ana. Ana is a full-time college student who shops for new clothes every few months, but tries to be environmentally conscious and thrifty when she can. Overall, Ana wants to reduce the environmental impact of her clothes.

Looking at the competitive landscape, I evaluated 3 direct competitors which were all some sort of secondhand e-commerce platform and 2 indirect competitors. I gathered from my competitors that my design should incorporate:

• Feed feature that helps people discover items 

• Detailed listing information 

• Ability to share purchases with friends 

• Discover friends nearby

Areas of improvement I noted were that there could be a greater promotion of sustainability and a more selective group of listings so as not to overwhelm the user.

Phase 2: Screen design

After examining all the findings I received, I identified a few key insights and translated them into a design concept: Circle. The app would address user needs by featuring the ability to:

• Browse items sold nearby to discover new pieces (MVP)

• See all nearby postings at once

• Shop and receive items quickly through pickup/dropoff options

• Gives the user positive encouragement towards sustainable practices with a gratitude modal

• Upload unwanted clothes for compensation (MVP)

Building off of the MVP design features, I developed two happy path user flows, one with the intention of selling and the other with the intention of buying. Using these user flows, I created a sitemap to develop a better picture of the overall design. Afterwards, I moved into paper prototyping.

After conducting two rounds of usability testing on my paper prototypes, I turned the paper prototypes into digital wireframes, on which I conducted another two rounds of usability testing.

The first two rounds of usability testing provided me with feedback on the location of certain features, as well as positive feedback on the encouragement modal, which helped confirm for me that it was a sound design choice that truly addresses the user’s goals. Taking the feedback I received, I moved into my second round of wireframes and subsequent usability testing.

Incorporating all the findings from usability testing, I moved into the third and final round of wireframes and began to incorporate visual design aspects.

Phase 3: Next steps

In the future, I hope to conduct further usability testing to improve on the design, as well as taking another pass at visual design to include accessibility aspects. In terms of feature prioritization, testing results demonstrated that users would benefit most from the inclusion of seller verification, seller messaging, and a expanded payment options (Zelle, PayPal, etc).