Case Study: Marketplace App
This was a “jump ball” project, where I was asked to design a Letgo-type app, exclusively on Android, for private-party car sellers. Historically, the Mobile Apps team’s focus was entirely on the car shopping experience, with all of the work for sellers being left to the Sell & Trade, or Dealer Tools teams (both web-only). The goal here was to build a familiar, SIY app-forward experience whose minimalist, shopping experience put car photography first.
I had one lengthy meeting with the senior designer for the Mobile Apps team where we aligned on MVP, with a few quick follow-up sessions to iron out any issues that came up as work proceeded.
The turnaround from ideation to finished pixel designs took about 3-4 weeks, and had a hard deadline for development because of the limited time available to the Android team. Because of those factors, it was decided to really lean into Material Design so that the app could be completed as quickly as possible.
The navigation was divided into 4 main sections:
Marketplace/Shop
Add Photo/Create Listing
Messaging/Chat
User Profile
The idea was for the app to load this screen immediately after the splash screen. One long-standing goal the UX team wanted to incorporate was an open search text field for shopping. This is a very common element in similar apps, so we pushed for its inclusion here. Final decision would be made by the whole Mobile Apps team during story-sizing.
One of the big questions was whether or not we should use a traditional or masonry grid. The decision to use a traditional grid came down to a few factors outside of the pure Marketplace experience, including the business requirement of including price and make/model info upfront, as well as how these listings would appear on the main website.
Since no testing was baked into the process, we could not gauge the impact this design choice would have on users’ engagement.
Car illustrations in these screens were created by another team member.
In addition to streamlining the shopping UX, we wanted to do the same for the selling process. This would reduce the friction involved with posting a car for sale, and hopefully lead to more private party sellers choosing our ecosystem.
After tapping on an empty tile, the user would go to the default camera experience for Android and come back here after they hit SAVE.
Forms to complete the car details were hidden under the accordion folds, with only the Seller’s Notes section being expanded by default.
Pricing tools are an important part of the selling (and shopping) experience. But to streamline the UX, we had to communicate that information while keeping the user fully focused on completing their listing.
The final step before “going live” was to review the ad. For consistency’s sake, the Vehicle Details screen a shopper would see when tapping on a tile in the Marketplace would look virtually identical to this.
The Chat Hub would look like the first screen in the hub for car shoppers. As a seller, you would see the shopper’s name instead of the price.
To streamline the process of encouraging users to create a profile, we wanted to promote social sign-ups. Tapping on the facebook button would take the user to a default flow.
The profile section was where the user could manage their ads, or change global settings. We could pull in a profile pic from facebook to make things more personal. Non-facebook users would see a generic top-third.
Once this work was completed, I handed off the designs to the Android team because I was officially on a different product at the time, and moved onto that work.