Neighborhood Deals aims to address the growing demand for sustainable and affordable shopping options by creating a platform that connects buyers with sellers in their local community. By facilitating the exchange of second-hand goods, the app not only promotes the reuse of existing resources but also fosters a sense of community and reduces the environmental impact of traditional retail practices. With features like location-based searches, Neighborhood Deals offers a seamless and trustworthy way for people to find and purchase second-hand items that meet their specific needs and preferences.
During the initial development phase, we produced several design artifacts to aid our understanding of user needs and motivations. We developed personas and scenarios that highlighted user goals and behaviors when engaging with a second-hand item app. To communicate design ideas and concepts to our software development team, we created UX sketches that offered visual representations of the proposed design and features. These sketches served as the basis for a visual prototype, which helped us refine the UX design prior to implementation.
To gain a thorough understanding of the competition for our website, we used a combination of methods. We conducted online searches to identify competing apps and their features while taking note of what seemed to be working versus what needed to be either changed or updated.
A competitive analysis was used to determine the strengths and weaknesses of key competitors in our industry, including their products, pricing structures, features, and available platforms. By leveraging these insights, we aim to create a product that provides a superior user experience and sets us apart from our competitors.
Heuristic evaluation was conducted to assess competing apps’ usability and design against established UX principles and best practices. This helped to identify areas for improvement and provided recommendations for optimizing our app’s user experience. Additionally, heuristic evaluation is a relatively quick and cost-effective method that can be performed by expert evaluators or even by non-experts with some training.
Based on the results of the competitive analysis, it appears that Nextdoor and Craigslist are the most well-known apps for buying and selling items, but they have their respective limitations. Nextdoor has issues with spam and unwelcoming discourse, while its busy design may be overwhelming for some users. On the other hand, Craigslist has a basic layout that is not specific to yard sales. Among the less-known apps, Yard Sale Treasure Map only focuses on yard sales and lacks item specificity. Garage Sale Tracker, although it has a specific focus on garage sales, has an outdated design and does not provide many results. Overall, there seems to be an opportunity for Neighborhood Deals that combines the strengths of these existing apps while addressing their limitations.
We have identified various demographics that will use Neighborhood Deals by creating personas. These demographics range from a 34-year-old business professional to a 71-year-old retiree. As a result, the app must cater to users with diverse backgrounds and interests. Our personas’ scenarios aided us in recognizing the primary concerns that users may have when utilizing the app. The app’s crucial features include effortless posting of yard sales or used items, convenient search options for specific items and yard sales, and guidance to nearby yard sales.
During our heuristic evaluation, we discovered that our competitors were deficient in some key areas that we could capitalize on to differentiate ourselves. Firstly, their design aesthetics were not up to par, often lacking unique design features. Secondly, their apps lacked adequate error handling and prevention features, leading to frustrating user experiences. Thirdly, our competitors had no new innovative features that set them apart from the rest of the market. Lastly, their apps were cluttered with excessive advertisements and postings that detracted from the user experience. By focusing on these areas and improving upon them, we believe we can create a superior app that will stand out from the competition.
Drawing two UX sketches aided to visualize and communicate the user experience we were aiming for. They allowed for the ideation of different design solutions and aided in relaying our desired UX design to the software engineers.
These research methods and the discovered findings have uncovered a range of insights into our user’s needs and preferences related to buying and selling second-hand items, as well as identified strengths and weaknesses in existing competitors. By incorporating these findings, we have developed new insights into our UX design that will shape future work on Neighborhood Deals. For example, the UX sketches as well as personas and scenarios have helped us understand our users’ goals, motivations, and problem points, as well as identify key user interactions and touchpoints. Personas and scenarios have also helped us to consider how the app’s design can accommodate our users with their different needs and preferences. Our heuristic evaluations have helped identify specific areas of our competitors’ apps that require improvement, such as visual design and error handling. Based on these insights, new design considerations could include simplifying the user interface, improving search functionality, offering unique features, and incorporating sustainability principles into our app’s design. Overall, using the latest user insights to inform design recommendations can help ensure that our app meets users’ needs and preferences and provides a seamless and enjoyable user experience.
While the research methods discussed can provide valuable insights into user needs and preferences, there are potential caveats that we should keep in mind. Our personas and scenarios may and most likely won’t fully capture the range of user behaviors and interactions that the app is likely to encounter in the real world. Additionally, the competitive analysis may not fully reveal all the details of how competitive the market is or may be limited by the availability and accuracy of data. Similarly, UX sketches and personas/scenarios may not fully capture the complexity of user needs and behaviors or may be based on assumptions that are not fully backed by factual data. To handle these potential caveats, we can use a variety of methods, such as combining multiple research methods to divide findings, recruiting a broad range of participants, and testing the website in real-world scenarios. By being mindful of these potential caveats and taking steps to address them, we can ensure that our findings and recommendations are grounded in accurate and relevant data, and are more likely to result in a successful and effective app.