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