Project

Capstone UX/UI project to explore a chosen problem space and design a solution.

Challenge

Provide a strong thrift store searching product that provides users information about a thrift store like popularity, inventory rotation, or style.

Solution

An iOS mobile app that can increase user’s success rates of finding new thrift stores in a satisfying experience.

Research 

Survey

34 participants volunteered to provide feedback on the following research questions: 

1. What steps do users take in seeking a new thrift store? 

2. Do users search a specific style when visiting a new store? What type? 

3. How often do thrift stores carry styles that users like? 

4. What are the positive and negative experiences in visiting a new thrift store? 

Key Takeaways

• 47.1% of participants shop at physical thrift stores 1-2 times per month

• 64.7% of participants have a style in mind when visiting a store

• 41.2% of participants seek new thrift stores around 1-4 times per year

Affinity Map

Once the survey was complete, these questions were used to assess each user’s thrift shopping experience. Once enough feedback was received, 5 participants were asked to participate in an in-depth interview via phone call where the following information was found and organized by affinity map as shown in the image to the right. 

Key Takeaways

• Knowing the store information would improve the shopping process of users.

• Having an improved and successful shopping process can increase likeliness of finding participants’ style.

• Resources that have style information can increase likeliness of finding items.

• Participants need a better resource of thrift store information which can encourage shopping in unfamiliar areas. 

Persona

After the affinity map was created and organized, 3 personas were created: Alec, Maya, and Leah where a short bio of their background, thrifting habits, struggles, and goals were listed.

How Might We…..

The following questions were the key challenges that could improve users’ thrift shopping experience:

• How might we let shoppers know what thrift stores carry their shopping preferences? 

• How might we help shoppers explore new thrift stores?

• How might we provide the most information about thrift stores to provide shoppers the best expectation of stores?

Design Journey

Guerilla Usability Test & Findings

Once the sketches were created, they were formatted in Marvel and tested amongst 5 users using Guerilla Usability Tests.

key takeaways 

• Product was easy to navigate

• Certain terminology on the app was confusing

• Confusion on whether users could begin their search on the landing page

• Users were ready for more pages!

  View and interact with the low fidelity prototype on Marvel here.

Wireframe & flow

After creating and testing the low fidelity sketch prototype, obvious changes were able to be updated and the product began to transition into a digital low fidelity prototype. To begin the prototype, a low fidelity wireframe and wireflow were created to ensure a smooth and understandable transition into a high fidelity wireframe.

Moodboard

Prototype

First Iteration

With the visualizations of the wireframes, moodboard, and style guide complete the first high fidelity prototype was created as shown in the images below.

Usability Test

After creating the first high fidelity prototype via Invision, 5 moderated usability tests were conducted where the key following issues were founded and organized by priority:

The high priority and mid priority issues were resolved in the high fidelity prototype. To view the full prototype, please visit here.

Reiterate Prototype

After receiving feedback from the usability tests of the first iterations, I was able to further modify and improve components in the second iteration. 

Key Changes: 

• Addition of the Opening page of the app and location request page

• Complete new look of homepage

• Addition of Alerts in Bookmarks page

• Addition of pins in Map page

• Addition of Account Sign Up page

• Addition of My Reviews page

To view the full and final prototype, please visit here:

Recap

While there was great success from the research to the design process, there are functions that can be improved in future iterations such as adding a phone number and website link to store pages, adding a “sort” function in the Bookmarks page, remove “New Follower” notification, and more. In creating Outskirt, I learned how to effectively create a product for the first time using key skills  such as researching, interviewing, organizing data and designing while learning new resources like Sketch, Invision, Miro, and Marvel.