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Efficiency drives use, while community improves retention
Users’ main goal is to quickly give or receive items. So while transaction-focused apps lack warmth, they're still preferred since they allow users to fulfill this task quickly. Even if the online experience isn't the friendliest, more often than not, the offline exchange provides a much needed sense of community and connection.
Opportunity
The primary focus of the app should be to streamline the listing and claiming experience, while also providing a sense of community through an activity feed, as an "unexpected benefit" of the platform.
Building trust while protecting privacy
Opportunity
Make members on the platform feel like real people that users can trust by building their identity around their community interactions. Require lightweight profiles that highlight gifting activity rather than personal data.
No-shows and irrelevant content cause friction
Sorting through a sea of outdated posts with already-claimed items and dealing with failed exchanges diminish the experience, leaving users feeling like the platform is inefficient and the community is unreliable.
Opportunity
Make feed more personalized with accurate location defaults, time-based sorting, and hide posts that contain items that have been "claimed." Reinforce community guidelines, provide reporting tools, and support moderation to address no-shows and poor conduct.
Inequities cause tension
Inequitable giving practices happen. People with wealth of time and fast internet connections tend to be able to claim items more often than others without.
Opportunity
Increase transparency by showing “gift exchange stats,” recent activities, and past posts in the people’s profile, so gifters can make more equitable decisions.
Card sorting
This exercise helped inform the information architecture and bottom navigation on early iterations.
Mid-fidelity wireframes
I narrowed the project scope to the core value of the product: the ease of gifting a pre-owed item to the user's immediate community in a trusted environment. I created wireframes based on the optimal path for completing this task.
Usability testing
Three rounds of usability testing helped validate and invalidate my assumptions and guided further design iterations.
Home / Main feed
Hypothesis
User will want to scan the content and familiarize themselves with the community before starting their primary task. Content is organized by tabs to not overwhelm the user.
Findings
“Offering” and “Requesting” are too ambigious and leaves the users confused.
Users did not understand why the three different types of posts were separated by tabs. They expected to see all posts in one feed.
Iterate
Change verbiage to “Giving” and “Asking.”
Combine all posts in one feed, but make each type visually distinct to avoid confusion.
Change card layout to accomodate posts that don’t contain images.
Create your profile
Hypothesis
User will want to create an identity on this platform before they give away their item. They can control the level of anonymity based on their comfortability.
Findings
Most users wanted to skip this step.
Iterate
Provide default randomized display name and avatar so that user can skip this step but still complete their task.
Trigger a dialog that reminds users to complete their profile after they finish their task. User can stay anonymous, so the dialog will only pop up once.
Community guidelines
Hypothesis
User learns capabilites of the app and community guidelines. These align with their values and in turn, reinforces their trust in the platform and the users on it.
Findings
Most users didn't read the guidelines because they assumed they already knew the info.
Users were frustrated that these dialogs created extra steps for them before they can get to their task.
Iterate
To interfere less with the user’s progress, change the UI from full-screen takeover to an overlay dialog.
Get rid of Posting Guidelines. Users are already familiar with these so it adds no value.
Mark as claimed
Hypothesis
After a successful gift exchange, users will want to mark their item as claimed, to remove the post from the feed so that they no longer get notifications about the item. This dialog pops up the next time they open up the app after posting their item.
Findings
Users were confused about why they had to complete this step.
Iterate
A clearer affordance is to turn this action into a toggle on the post.
A pop-up dialog box is too disruptive. Users don’t need this reminder since there will be other triggers that will lead them to complete this action on their own (e.g. someone interacts with their old post).
Visual design
The brand identity of Giftcycle is based on characteristics that users used to describe a positive community: warm, generous, and trustworthy. I based the color palette off of the literal and symbolic properties of houseplants — the most popular item for gift exchange amongst users. I also created supporting visuals like the logo, illustrations, and icons that reflect the soft, human-like quality of the brand identity.
