Repurposing kids' goods with love

Are you a parent and have had issues getting rid of your children's outgrown goods? "Spin It", brings a simple and trustworthy solution to repurposing kids' goods through drop shipment delivery. Who doesn't love the idea of earning back on money spent or donating to NGOs? See how "Spin It" stands out from the crowd and learn about its design process from UX and user research all the way to the UI Design and finalized hi-fidelity prototype. Let's get inspired to be more sustainable and do something good!  ​

The Brief

Children’s fashion and goods have always interested me from a business perspective and I wanted to develop a project that could solve a problem within that area while also promoting sustainability. Here is what I found:

 THE PROBLEM

• Substantial waste from inappropriately disposed children’s toys and goods.
• 90% of kids’ toys are made out of non-recyclable plastic.
• Parents spend a lot of money multiple times a year on children’s goods which they out grow quickly.

THE CHALLENGE

• Motivate parents to get in the habit of properly disposing their children’s outgrown goods.
• Create opportunities to recover some money spent.
• Facilitate the process of donating goods to charity.

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Objectives

HYPOTHESIS

• We believe that we can motivate busy working parents to properly dispose of their kids’ outgrown goods by providing a quick and easy uploading system on a resale/donations app.​
• We believe that our app will achieve a differentiation from our competitors by providing more flexible shipping and delivery options where customers will not need to worry about picking up goods at vendors’ houses.​

BUSINESS METRICS

• Time spent on the app
• # of downloads
• Amount of goods company receives to drop ship

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UX Trajectory and Research

COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS
I researched different competitors among retail/mobile consignment apps and looking at their main features, what points work best for opportunities? Here are a few that opened up great possibilities and points of differentiation for this project:

• Shipping availability
• User friendly listing process
• Quality control description
• Children's goods sold exclusively

COLLECTING RESEARCH & ANALYZING PAIN POINTS

Key take aways based on 130 survey responses and 8 interviews

After gathering all my quantitative and qualitative data, I organized all the research into an affinity diagram, where I was able to categorize the findings into sections and hone in on the 3 main pain points:

1. Price
2. Time (Disposition + will to dispose of goods correctly)
3. Transparency

DEFINING THE PERSONA AND USER JOURNEY

A Persona is a representation of a type of customer.

After narrowing down the target user for this project, I developed the user persona, Naomi Parker, a 32-year old busy working mother of 2 who lives in Boston and constantly shifts gears between her family and work. She is a buyer for an e-commerce platform who loves to internet shop and is a heavy multi-tasker. Her main goals are to be more sustainable, find a better solution for her children's outgrown goods and earn back money spent. As she works at an e-commerce, she is skeptical about trusting resale apps due to their lack of transparency regarding visibility of products and commitment from buyers. She often spends a lot of money on her children who outgrow their goods quickly and she doesn't have a lot of time to dispose of the goods as she is constantly overwhelmed by all her to do's. So how can we help this super-human solve her problem?

Let's start by looking at Naomi's User Journey. This tracks her steps as she tries to handle disposing of her children's outgrown goods. Throughout that time she has multiple low points, such as realizing how much unused goods she has lying around at home, she doesn't have time to properly deal with them, she tries joining consignment apps but they have expensive fees and their listing process is long and complicated. Last but not least, she goes through all this trouble running the risk of some items simply not selling. Not cool.

MOSCOW METHODOLOGY - A fantastic tool for Ideation and feature Prioritization

​After analyzing Naomi's User Journey and ideating her opportunities, I used the Moscow methodology to prioritize the key features to be included in the app. I separated all features into Must, Should, Could, and Won’t haves. The features in blue (Must Have), were the ones chosen to be included into this first stage of the app and what led to the Minimum Viable Product (MVP), defining the user’s happy path.

The MVP is: 
A facilitated 3-step listing process and ability to drop ship goods.

Design: Let's talk about UI

USER FLOW 

Having defined the MVP, I moved to planning Spin It's User Flow, which is crucial before drafting out concept sketches as it works like a map to track the entire journey a user takes to complete a task or interact with a feature. 

In this case, this user flow tracks the steps that a return user should take each time they interact with the app. 

CONCEPT SKETCHES 

Based on the MVP, I drafted the first lo-fi prototype of the app by hand where the objective is to add a new item listing to an already existing account and prep all listed items for drop shipment.

Originally, the app would work as a pick up service where the user could schedule a date and time for their goods to be picked up by the company. Once categories are selected, the user then clicks on “Set Pick Up” and the journey would end with a confirmation pop-up.
​
And so begins the journey from hand drawn lo-fi's....

...to Mid-fi wireframes drafted on Sketch.

So, how about we add some color? 

​VISUAL COMPETITVE ANALYSIS

First, let's take a look at what colors and shapes are already being used out there...

​This visual competitive analysis compares elements for Spin It's 3 biggest competitors: Facebook, Ebay, and ​Amazon. 
​
It is important to have a closer look at these elements in order to better understand the look and feel of these companies that are already hot on the market. 

​MOOD BOARD & STYLE TILE

Realizing that most of the colors and different design styles in the market take on a more serious look, I wanted convey a different approach with Spin It. 

So for the Moodboard, I chose light, approachable and playful colors and images that convey the following key words: young, fun, friendly and reliable. 

These words translated again onto the Style Tile, which defined further elements such as the fonts, logo, primary, secondary buttons and Spin It's overall youthful tone. 

Both the Moodboard and the Style Tile were tested for desirability with 6 users resulting in the following quantitative and qualitative data:

100% of testers reacted positively to the colors and images.

“I feel really good just by looking at the mood board, like it’s nostalgic.”​

20% of testers had minor constructive feedback.

“The colors of the toy train doesn’t match the rest.”

100% of testers reacted with similar words and meanings.

“I like it so much! Brings back a lot of good memories from my childhood."

STYLE GUIDE 

After all visual elements had been chosen and established, I created a Style Guide using the Atomic Design methodology to showcase all the active, inactive icons, buttons, and navigation bars. I also included the color palette and logos used. The purpose of the Style Guide is to provide a reference to the design and development teams of all the elements used in a project. It serves as a guide in keeping all design elements consistent across the board.

And finally, the whole UX and UI journeys have led to defining the hi-fi screens :-).

Throughout the whole UX and UI process for this project, the user was always kept at the center of every design choice.  So in order to get to the Hi-fi's, Spin It's wireframes were tested every step of the way. Here's a recap of some of the usability test results from lo-fi to hi-fi:

Hi-Fi Prototype

Check out Spin It's prototype in action as the demo takes a return user through the entire happy path from landing page to adding an item and drop shipping goods.

And watch me present Spin It during Ironhack Miami's Hackshow :-D. 

Interested in learning more about Spin It? Read my Medium post by clicking below.

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