Simplytraders Student Community Platform

MY PROCESS

This project began as a personal initiative to address the challenges I faced as a college student dealing with the high costs of textbooks. The concept for SimplyTraders emerged from my own experiences with inefficient textbook resale, prompting the creation of a platform where students could directly buy and sell their books.

HYPOTHESIS STATEMENT

To guide the development, I crafted a hypothesis statement to pinpoint our target features and functionalities: "We believe that creating a direct trading platform for college students will result in significant cost savings and convenience because it eliminates intermediary fees and offers direct peer-to-peer negotiation."

TARGET PERSONAS

The design process started with developing lightweight personas to represent the diverse student body. These personas helped in understanding the varied needs and behaviors of potential users without significant financial or time investment.

DISCOVERY & IDEATION

With personas set, I defined the desired outcomes and KPIs using affinity mapping, which provided a clear framework for measuring success. The initial UI concepts began on a whiteboard, transitioning to sketches that outlined data arrangement and interaction flows.

WIREFRAMING

Using tools like Gliffy, I formalized the core flows, data organization, and interactions documented during the sketching phase.

RAPID PROTOTYPING

Early user involvement was critical. I utilized Marvel app to convert sketches into interactive low-fidelity prototypes. This stage was essential for identifying usability issues and gathering initial user feedback.

HIGH FIDELITY PROTOTYPES

Following positive feedback and necessary adjustments from the low-fidelity stage, I moved to high-fidelity prototyping with Proto.io, which facilitated detailed user feedback and further refinement of the design.

VALIDATION AND TESTING

The design process included regular feedback cycles both internally with colleagues and externally with target users on campus. Tools like Google Analytics, Heap, and Intercom integrated into the platform provided continuous insights into user interactions. Here is a demo of the responsive campus feed page looks like.

SUMMARIZE AND ITERATE

This ongoing project emphasizes iterative design, validated through user behavior analysis. The process highlights the importance of flexibility, breaking the project into manageable parts, and trusting the development process to achieve the best outcomes.