{ Phase 1 }

Research

Our team started our research by reading through online articles and forums to get a rough idea of what users thought about the second hand market experience. This type of research in combination with casual interviews had lead us to the assumption that women would be the demographic most concerned about online marketplace safety. We created an online survey to gain a better understanding of what users thought about online marketplaces.

Our survey received over 100 responses and gave us valuable insight into who is most concerned about online marketplace safety, and how we could go about approaching their concerns.

The following data visualizations highlight the main insights and discoveries

Competitive Analysis

Which online marketplace do you use most frequently

FB Marketplace

Kijiji Marketplace

What features does Facebook Marketplace use that could have given them the competitive edge over Kijiji ?

Demographics

From among those users that responded “yes”

Q: Uncertainty about meetup location makes me feel anxious, scared, or unsafe.

77%

Of Genz

55%

Of Women

33%

Of Men

Opportunity

What do users want marketplaces to do better?

55%

Of users

Surveyed said having more info about the other prior to meeting would make them feel more safe.

73%

Of users

Said that online marketplaces could do more to make their users feel safe

{ Phase #2 }

Define

With our research findings we determined that younger age groups (specifically GenZ) are most concerned about their safety when using second hand marketplaces. As a result, this age group is less likely to use secondhand markets.

We also discovered that more than half of Kijiji users felt that the service could do more to make users feel safe. With this new information, we began exploring why users felt this way, and what could be done to make users feel safer.

{ Define }

Demographic / Persona

We created two personas that we felt accurately modelled the needs and pain points that real people were experiencing. Using our empathy map and these personas we were able to create companion user journey boards. These helped us to visualize that the biggest pain point our users faced came from preparing and attending the in person meetup.

{ Phase #3 }

Ideate

Breaking the user experience into steps based off our persona and journey Maps we brainstormed a list of feature ideas that could be changed or added throughout the process.

{ Ideate }

Buyer User Flow

1. Browsing items for sale
2. Check out various seller profiles
3. Try to communicate with a seller and are prompted with Kijiji safety tips
4. Communicating with seller and make offer
5. User and seller chat back and forth
6. Suggest a Kijiji recommended public meetup location
7. Seller confirm price, location and date/time to meet in chat
8. Heads to the meetup location but struggled to find the seller. User hits the “I can’t find you” button, prompting the seller to begin the map tracking
9. Open map and navigate towards the seller
10. User and seller communicate verbally and handle the transaction
11. Use app to confirm sale and possession of the item, can access help from support if needed, and rate the seller and public location

{ Phase #4 }

Prototype

Using the list of interactions as a rough guide to how our system might operate, we then created a more defined system map that we could follow. Creating the system map helped to kickoff to our prototype phase and would guide us in finding what features and screens needed designing.

{ Prototype }

Low Fidelity Screens

Our goal with our prototype was to implement our new features seamlessly into Kijiji’s existing design guidelines.  Through our wireframes, we designed, tested and iterated 22 screens overtime.

{ Prototype }

High Fidelity Screens

After testing and finalizing our wireframe prototype, we developed high fidelity mockups by applying Kijiji’s branding, ensuring that all new additions fit well into Kijiji’s existing brand guidelines.

{ Reflection }

End of Design Sprint

Overall working on this project was a really fun exercise for me and my colleagues. Because the team was so small, each of us needed to take on multiple roles. It was interesting to see which parts of the project we all gravitated too and which roles we decided to take on. This helped me to further identify my own strengths and weaknesses, and get more comfortable with working together as a team.

The next steps for the project would be to user test our high fidelity mockups on our user base and gather feedback based on how the users interacted with the new features.  From there we would iterate on the design, and potentially add new additions based on the feedback gathered.