2022
Side Project
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Background
As I got involved in the Instagram Thrift community, I started observing patterns in buyer and seller practices, like buyers always having post notifications on, commenting on postings first to 'reserve' them and the sketchy payment methods used to facilitate transactions. Seeing Instagram's non-existent e-Commerce functionality for small vendors causing frustration among users, I decided to create a solution that bridges the gap between marketing on Instagram and the process of selling.
Core problem
Problem Statement: Instagram thrift shoppers have an unfulfilling shopping experience because they're confined to a social media platform
Can't keep track of stores
Inconvenient workarounds for booking items
Forced to use unreliable payment methods
No order tracking
Approach & Process
Research and Discovery
My design process started by surveying and interviewing both buyers and sellers in the Instagram Thrift community and condensing insights from those probes, revealing key pain points users experience - sketchy payment methods, confusion about item availability (available/booked/sold), uncertainty about seller reliability, inability to stay up to date with thrift stores, etc. Instagram has proved both useful in helping customers find new thrift stores via its algorithm, and unsatisfactory in its lack of e-Commerce functionality.
Design and Development
Conducting HMW ideation facilitated the creation of the Information Architecture, from which I derived the user flows for both buyers and sellers, keeping in mind the fact that stores would be intrinsically connected to Instagram accounts.
Seller Reliability: The seller screen and item screen were structured to have ratings which communicate seller reliability at a glance, anchored by quantitative reviews by users.
Item Styles: By introducing tags for item styles, a limitation of Instagram was addressed by allowing shoppers to find similar items based on pre-defined tags they can explore and follow.
Curated Items: The seller page was segmented into all listings and curated, where the latter was a style-based combination of multiple listings, grouped and discounted by the seller, as both a positioning and a marketing strategy.
Booking Process: The confusion of item availability was resolved by communicating it clearly on item listings. To book an item, a more streamlined process was adopted which involved messaging the seller for bargaining and further questions as opposed to rogue commenting.
