GearShare
Responsive Interface Design Concept
Our UX team developed GearShare a responsive website & mobile app that addresses challenges with sustainably acquiring and using equipment needed for outdoor activities. In order to develop and deliver a relevant digital solution, we employed several UX methodologies to gather and synthesize user data.
My Role: UX Researcher & Project Manager
Duration: 2 Week Sprint (Dec 2023)
Tools: Figma, Notion, Keynote, Google Forms
Methods Used: User Interviews, Design Studio, Feature Prioritization, Usability Testing, Mobile/Desktop Prototyping, User Interviews, Design Studio, Feature Prioritization, Usability Testing, Mobile/Desktop Prototyping
WHat we set out to accomplish
Learn more about the goals, needs, and challenges of real life users to create a relevant digital solution.
Project Goals:
Identify problem space and target audience
Conduct user research to validate/invalidate assumptions
Develop a responsive website & mobile app that addresses users challenges
Design Opportunity:
Connect users with a sustainable way to donate, sell, or dispose of old equipment
Users are open to lending equipment, with an element of trust from a friend or mutual
Users seek durable, quality gear that is high quality and lasts several years
Solution
Based on user testing and business analysis, we developed GearShare - a digital marketplace for equipment used in outdoor activities & hobbies. Key functionality includes:
Lend out unused gear to your friends
Borrow equipment from community
Recycle equipment that can be given a second life
Find and connect with local businesses to donate gear
design Process
In order to develop GearShare - we followed the UX Design process outlined below. Keep reading to learn more about each aspect of this process in greater detail.
Learning about our target audience
Goal of research
Learn more about the behaviors, needs, and goals of outdoor enthusiasts.
User Interview Process
5 interviews selected from 10 screener surveys
Screener Survey targeted outdoor enthusiasts that engaged in any outdoor activities in the last 6 months
Prepared discussion guide to increase consistency & validate/invalidate assumptions
Asked questions to learn about outdoor activities, equipment used, and goals/pain points of users
Synthesizing interview data
We used affinity mapping to synthesize user interview data. Our team started by noting observations from each of the interviews and grouped the insights by similarity in order to extract common themes. These themes helped us to understand our target audience’s goals, needs, and pain points.
Identifying key insights from research
By identifying key themes across all 5 of our interviewees, we were able to distill actionable insights to apply to the design and used to create our persona & journey map.
Key Takeaways From Interviews
What We Heard From Users
Who are we designing for?
Persona
We created a persona to summarize our research, gain a visual understanding of the user, and focus our design efforts on ultimately solving the users's challenges. Based on the insights and direct quotes from our user interviews, we outlined our persona's goals, needs, and pain points.
Journey Map
The Journey Map walks through what’s potentially going on in the minds of our potential users when they are completing tasks. We are then able to identify where we might be able to address possible concerns with our design, highlighted within key takeaways.
Key Takeaways:
Difficult to borrow equipment
Donation Drop Off/ Pick Up challenges
Critical to stay within budget
Applying Research to design
Using the actionable insights from user research, we developed features that would directly align with each of the insights that we gathered. We will use these design ideas when we are sketching and iterating in our design studio. It is important that we design a platform that is based in research findings.
DESIGNING THE PLATFORM
Prioritizing Features
To kick off our design and ideation phase, we used two techniques to prioritize features while keeping in mind the constraints of limited resources. These exercises helped us to understand what features were high priority vs. low priority, and what already existed within the app.
Must Have Features
Ability to select/search for specific item
Friend only Lending option
Item rating system
Item Detail Page
Request Acceptance Notification
Borrow, Lend, Sell, Purchase, Recycle, and Donate need to be an option of selection
DEVELOPING OUR DESIGN
Our team conducted a design studio session to get our ideas onto paper and collaborate on our design. We used resources previously created including our persona, journey map, interview data/quotes, feature matrixes for inspiration when sketching out features.
Sketch (5 mins) - Come up with an idea
Pitch (3 mins) 1st round - Share idea with the Team
Critique (2 mins per Team Member)
Iterate (5 mins)- Create one best version of the combined ideas
Pitch (1 min) 2nd Round
Converge (30 mins) - Decide on the best solution/collab
TESTING OUR DESIGN WITH USERS
Testing Overview:
5 users per round, 2 rounds - testing on mid-fidelity and hi-fidelity protoypes
Method: Wrote tasks + test script; Measured users on time to complete task, easiness rating, and path to completing the task
Goal: Understand the usability of our current features to apply to our hi-fi design
Task Detail Report - Lending Gear to Friends
Direct/indirect success rate: 70%
Minor issue -"lend" button was difficult to find, causing users to miss it and find other modes of navigation, or it just took longer for them to notice it.
Analysis: Once users found the "lend" button, they were able to easily complete the task
Insights & Recommendations
Remove duplicate "cycling" buttons
Increase the size of text + icons + “lend” button for easier navigation and viewing
Change the verbiage for “feed"
Using insights from usability testing on our mid-fi prototype, we iterated on our design and applied user feedback as we developed our prototype from mid-fi to hi-fi.
How did the design changes affect usability?
Usability improved in 2/3 tasks from mid-fi to hi-fi testing, which validated our design decisions. Increased complexity in the hi-fi prototype was the cause for the increase in time/decrease in success rate, which will be fixed through additional iteration + user testing.
High-Fidelity MOCKUPS
Adapting Mobile design for desktop
In order to ensure that our design adapted to multiple devices, we created a desktop view for our website. We added annotations that have the related user tasks that a user would take action on each screen. Our team used a grid system to make sure that the user experience remained consistent in both views.
THE FUTURE OF OUR PLATFORM
Next Steps
Additional Rounds of User Testing on High-Fidelity Protoype
Develop and test Andriod design
Design more features from feature prioritization matrix
Improve Purchase/Sell aspects of the platform