Role
Contract UI/UX Designer for client thredUP in partnership with Invention Corps Berkeley
Skills
UX/UI Design
Qualitative User Research
Quantitative User Research
Usability Testing
Digital Prototyping
Timeline
Aug. 2022 - Dec. 2022 (12 weeks)
Tools
Figma
FigJam
Notion
Project Background
thredUP, an online consignment and thrift store, believes that thrifting is more than finding amazing deals on your favorite brands. It's about shopping mindfully, rejecting throwaway fast-fashion culture, and standing for sustainability.
College students, in particular, value in-person thrifting for its affordable price, environmental benefits, and the social factor of being able to thrift with your peers. There is no denying that online shopping lacks the social gratification of in-person thrifting.
Therefore, thredUP's Design Team challenged Invention Corps of Berkeley, a student-led design consultancy to make online secondhand shopping social. We were also challenged to increase engagement amongst college students on thredUP's user base.
My role in this project was to spearhead user research and contribute to the digital prototype of new social features for thredUP.
Therefore, we asked...
how might we reimagine online secondhand shopping as a social experience to grow thredUP's user base and increase engagement?
Developing a user's point of view
01
User Research
Qualitative and Quantative
We used various research methods to empathize and gain a better understanding of the behaviors of our target users. With the help of the team, I drafted interview guides and survey questions, and spearheaded secondary research and competitive analysis.
Research Synthesis
Upon researching the problem space and our users more in-depth, we had a wide range of quantitative and qualitative data to analyze and synthesize. We were also successful in gathering key findings from research articles and analyzing thredUP's competitors to see how they engage their users to be more social on their apps.
Now it was time to synthesize our user research findings into key insights to set a design framework that is centered around our target users. We all had to take a step back and look at the big picture due to the wide range of data collected. We did this by grouping our findings into sub-themes using affinity mapping, then keeping those research findings in mind, we categorized common behavioral patterns into user personas to design around those users' pain points and needs.
Wild Ideas Gone Wild...
02
Ideation
Diverge and Converge
Informed and motivated by our research insights, we began producing ideas for potential social features that would enhance online secondhand shopping for college students. We first diverged as a team with the 'worst possible idea' method, then with those ideas generated we did crazy 8's to create low-fidelity wireframes for those ideas while creating a short user flow.
Subsequently, using the initial ideas we created, we converged with the 'pugh matrix prioritization framework,' which ultimately lines up all the ideas on the y-axis and criteria on the x-axis that we weighed with a scale of importance to the problem. The ideas with the highest score would go on to group discussion and selection for final concepts.
Unexpected Pivot
03
Building Prototypes, and then...
Upon deriving three final concepts from our ideation session, we immediately started drafting up a user flow and started prototyping mid-fidelity wireframes on figma. The initial plan was to create a Minimum Viable Product on thredUP's desktop platform using their design system. However, upon doing our first round of usability testing for our mid-fidelity wireframes, we had a lot of negative feedback surrounding our mid-fidelity wireframes, and had to make an unexpected pivot.
The Pivot Process
Upon receiving negative feedback from the user interviewees from our usability testing session, we realized that we either needed to change up the problem space or pivot into a mobile experience, rather than a desktop. In fact, a few folks remarked that they could see a huge potential for what the features were trying to accomplish, but were slightly confused on how to use it. Therefore, we conducted a short survey with our target user base again primarily wondering if our user base primarily uses thredUP's mobile app or the desktop version. We also conducted preliminary research on social mobile experiences.
The first insight was that we realized many people would not use the desktop version to engage in social experiences. Also, much more college students used the mobile app version of thredUP, rather than the desktop version. Lastly, we realized that prototyping on a mobile interface would be more compatible with the social features we selected.
Using the insights collected, we collaboratively decided to focus on creating a social experience on thredUP's mobile interface and immediately pivoted to prototype the same social features on the mobile app using thredUP's mobile design system. Due to our schedule, we only had time to create a couple of greyscale frames for the mobile version.
Emphasizing the Mobile Experience
04
Usability Testing Again...
It was only right to conduct usability testing again to put our design hypotheses for the mobile experience to test. We asked for general feedback and categorized the usability testing guide into three categories: Discoverability, Learnability, and Satisfaction.
Finalizing the Mobile Experience
05
Collaborative Collections
This feature incentivizes college students to collaborate with others on shared collections, and exchange feedback and reactions. The reasoning behind a collaborative collection feature is to increase socialization within the app and have easier access to the 'group ordering' feature.
Group Ordering
This feature incentivizes college students to view and add clothes to the same cart, ultimately working towards a group discount together. The reasoning behind a group ordering feature is to motivate college students to socialize and shop together, while also reducing packaging and shipping costs for thredUP, and reducing the carbon footprint for each thredUP user.
Public Profiles
This feature provides college students with a way to customize their profile and connect and follow other profiles and their collections. It also gives them an opportunity to get clothes recommended by their friends within the collaborative collection.
Reflections...
As someone who loves thrifting and has extensive experience being a seller/buyer in online secondhand platforms, this was one of my most fulfilling projects. Additionally, this was my first human-centered design project working collaboratively as a new designer at Invention Corps. From conducting user research and learning how to use auto-layout, grids, components, and, in general, prototyping on figma was very fun.
Over the course of the semester, our team was challenged with a broad scope, multiple pivots, and new members that were on their first design project. Yes, it was stressful at times, but as a team, we learned the significance of being adaptable and being flexible to embrace new ideas. Additionally, learning to be prepared for any sudden changes in the project due to the needs of the clients and the users.
Kudos to Brenda Vuong, Carissa Cui, Sarah Jang, Clara Yoo, Christina Khan, and Eric Wang for an amazing experience and being a very open-minded and fun team to work with.