Craigslist Dashboard

Overview

Coding dojo bootcamp cohort were assigned to create a redesign of Craigslist in teams of 3. We were tasked to conduct our own interviews, research, and design process for understanding what a UX/UI designer does. We were given one month and half to work as a team and half a month as an individual.

What is the problem?

Craigslist user experience and user interface has consistently stayed the same since its creation. Why hasn’t it changed? Does it need to be changed?

What is Craigslist?

Craigslist was initially made for buyers and sellers to have a platform to make transactions amongst each other. It focuses on a simple and primitive user interface that make it straightforward for users to complete their purpose on their website without distractions. It also has features of forums and job postings that promote community and multiple usages of the platform.

THE GOAL

Construct a redesign that solves the problems that arise from your teams’ user interviews.

THE SOLUTION AND IMPACT

A mood-board that is generated with user’s answers from a preset of questions regarding specific categories to encourage continuous user engagement.

My Role

I conducted interviews with colleagues and friends who have used Craigslist on a consistent basis. I collaborated with two other designers on the ideation and production of the redesign.

Research

Craigslist has fierce competition on what it does well especially from Facebook Marketplace and Trovit. They use a modern design for clearer accessibility and navigation through pages compared to Craigslist. They also have profile customization to support a more comfortable and marketable experience.

Interviews (5)

Friends and Family 60%
Coworkers 40%

Goals

How does Craigslist still maintain its user base?
Why do people use Craigslist over its competition?

Sample of questions asked

What type of design are you looking for?

Why do you use Craigslist?

What color palette are you looking for?

We established three trends after user interviews were conducted. 1: 100% interviewees see Craigslist as one time usage or by need basis specifically furniture and expensive rare items. 2: Lack of information in postings caused concern for safety with making transactions.3: 100% interviewees shared a concern for sustainability.

Conceptual Development

We needed to address either creating more confidence for buyers making purchases or to encourage Craigslist users to use the product consistently instead of one time usages. Other redesigns either focused on modernizing the user interface or creating a user profile system to boost user credibility. We felt that with time constraints and wanting to have a new approach, we decided to avoid focusing on user security. Promoting user usage was more interesting to create instead of a detailed user profile because of common redesign for user profiles. Funnily, we realized that using Pinterest for inspirations of user interfaces finalized our decision on our redesign. Pinterest has a system of saving posts and creating mood boards. We thought that Craigslist could do it similarly while maintaining its primary function.

Early Wireframe Ideas

Since there wasn’t a focus to on what exactly the mood board will do, these challenges were halting the process. We had to refer back to our user interviews to narrow down the mood board’s focus.100% of our user interviewees have bought furniture from Craigslist to promote sustainability and to fill up space in their homes. Our interviewees either didn’t have time to build or afford brand new furniture items through major retailers. This sparked the idea of focusing entirely on interior design with only Craigslist products.I was tasked on creating the questionnaire pages of the product and prototyping the pages to go from one to another. Please refer below the

Question 1

Final Product & Development

Our instructor challenged each individual to take their converged prototype and redesign it with your own personal style. Hearing this at first was a little daunting because I wasn’t sure on how to change what we just made. I decided to focus on what makes Craigslist what it is. Simple and functional but with a modern style current to our time.Minimalism was the first thing that stuck out to because it focuses on keeping things simple and utilizing white or negative space to create structure. I created a style tile focused around minimalism because it is a style I personally enjoy and it would also maintain Craigslist’s identity.

Using this style tile sped up my process on redesigning what my team had previously into something I resonate with. I had more confidence about becoming a UX designer since this iteration would be solely defined by me. I wanted to display what I believed in with respect to my team’s work when redesigning this iteration.

Question 1

I decided to scrap the budget question only because that would be limiting on all the potential items can be considered for the mood board but also not entirely necessary for our redesigns main task. I decided to add descriptions associated with the items because it would boost user confidence on their choices by understanding the products more. Finally I focused on using black to dictate space and white to accent the text for a more cohesive aesthetic. I wanted the text to stand out while being easy to read.

What’s Next

Overall executing a redesign based off user needs was an eye opening experience. Trying to create a redesign with other aspiring designers was difficult to manage. If we had more time, I would have obtained more user data for product affirmation and modify features influenced by user testing. Finding what patterns surface after observing our users execute tests of the product. I would definitely add the ability to see the products’ info over a hover of the item and saving a specific item on the mood board before refreshing a new one. We would have focused on the other issue our interviewees’ expressed with the security and validation of users in Craigslist if we had more time.We would have conducted more interviews on what makes the user more comfortable to make a transaction. We understood that security would lead to more confidence and user usage of the product. The mood board doesn’t entirely solve the problem our users may have with their future purchases.

Prototype Version 1 Final Prototype