Eric @ ThredUp

ThredUp

Imagining online second shopping as a social experience for college students

ROLE

UX Design Consultant

TIMELINE

Sep 2022 - Dec 2022

SKILLS

User Research
Interaction Design
User Testing

Project Overview

In 2022, ThredUP experienced high increase of Gen-Z users, while struggling to convert them to payed loyal customers.

Hence they aimed to transform online thrift shopping into a social, engaging experience.

By enhancing user flows and interactive experience, we strived to replicate the social dynamics of in-person shopping, boosting user engagement and expanding user base, thus redefining the online thrift shopping experience

Impact

440k

user impacted

32%

increase in target user engagement

17%

growth in target user base

Design Highlight

Friends Recommendation

The seamlessly recommendation design enhances app's community engagement by encouraging more time spent on the platform and fostering interactions among users. Ultimately, this leads to more purchases nudged by peer input, enhancing the overall shopping experience and sales conversion

Individual / Group wishlist

Empower users to curate and share fashion selections with ease, blending the casual charm of offline thrifting with one-touch wishlist-to-cart functionality. This fusion enhances social validation, reduces purchasing hesitations, and transforms browsing behavior into confident, conversion-boosting buying decisions

Group Ordering

Introduce a group order feature that offers discounts, thereby incentivizing purchases and fostering social interactions that lead directly to sales

Project Timeline

Faced with a 10-week deadline, our team adapted the standard 5-step design thinking model into a more agile approach. We merged ideation, prototyping, and testing into a continuous, iterative cycle, heavily driven by user feedback. This flexibility was crucial for our goal to digitize human social interactions for thredUP's platform.

Research

Competitive Analysis

Primary Research

The team went on and visit multiple Thrift Store around East Bay area, observing and noting down customer behaviors especially common social behaviors. Have casual talk with a store owner and multiple customers.
We’ve also conducted surveys and interviews, analyzing data from 308 user survey, and 27 interview

More than

85%

of user often asked fashion advice during in-person shopping

Only

18%

of user have shopped with friends online

66%

of user see thrifting as a leisure / social activity

“I prefer in-person shopping ...
my friends can give me advice and I tend to feel better about my purchases with that reassurance”

"I feel a lot less burdened when I shop secondhand, since everything is so cheap, I feel a lot more satisfied with my purchase.”

A lot of the times, I honestly don’t have any intent to purchase, I jusand if I like something I’ll buy it. Online shopping is most like a past time activity.

User Insight

01. Users often feel indecisive and lack confidence in their purchase decisions when shopping alone online due to the absence of immediate social feedback and reassurance from friends

02. Shoppers are experiencing a sense of financial pressure and decision fatigue when faced with the traditional high-cost retail environment, dampening the overall satisfaction of their shopping experience.

03. Potential buyers often visit the platform without a clear intent to purchase, engaging in browsing as a leisurely pastime, but the current platform design does not fully support this exploratory and casual shopping behavior

Design Goals

Lack or Reassurance

Develop features that simulate the in-store social experience by allowing friends to connect and share opinions on items within the online platform, thus providing the sought-after reassurance and validation to enhance user confidence in purchase decisions.

Lack of Affordability

Highlight the cost-effectiveness of secondhand items and emphasize value-driven narratives to alleviate financial pressure, creating a more rewarding shopping experience that boosts user satisfaction.

Lack of engagement

Redesign the browsing experience to cater to leisure users, incorporating elements that encourage exploration and discovery, making the platform a more engaging space for those seeking a casual diversion from boredom.

User Journey Map

HMW Statement

How might we reimagine the online thrifting social experience to alleviate user indecisiveness by fostering social validation and peer reassurance, while catering to their desire for a leisurely diversion during moments of boredom?

Ideation

Brain Dumping

Prioritization Framework

Design team collaborated with thredUp’s PM, engineer, designers from other team, as well as informal evaluative interview with target user and came up this prioritization frame work to evaluate our first round of ideation

Final Concept

Collaborative Collection

To bridge the gap of social validation and peer reassurance which users miss while shopping online, by simulating a collaborative in-store shopping experience.

Lack of Engagement

Lack of Reassurance

Group Ordering

To promote a social shopping experience that emphasizes affordability, and group consensus, making shopping more enjoyable and less financially burdensome.

Lack of Affordance

Lack of Reassurance

Public Porfile & Recommendation

To foster a community-centric platform where users can showcase their style, discover new fashion inspirations, and gain reassurance on their fashion choices.

Lack of Engagement

Lack of Reassurance

Public Profile & Recommendation

User Flow

The Public Profile feature enables users to curate a unique profile showcasing their public collections, personal style, and favorite items. It also allows users to follow others, exchange style inspirations, and provide/receive feedback on collections, thus cultivating a more socially engaging and validating shopping environment.

The public profile flow is too complex and demanding for our current resources. Hence, design team collectively agreed to simplify the design, focusing on features that matched our immediate capabilities and postponing more ambitious aspects like user-generated content, rewards, and profile customization for future consideration in the next product cycle slated for late 2023

The revised profile flow retains essential existing features, enhancing them with access to published wishlists. It forgoes the originally planned wishlist social statistics and notification features, striking a balance between user engagement and development practicality. This strategic simplification respects the project's constraints while still achieving our design objective of fostering user engagement

Testing & Iteration: Recommendations

Testing highlighted the user's need for organizing items into various wishlists. In discussions with the product management and operations teams, the emphasis was placed on enhancing the conversion from social engagement to actual order placements. Consequently, we focused on integrating multiple features to offer users greater editing flexibility within their wishlists.

Envision a dynamic, regularly updated recommendation feature designed for casual browsing, enhancing user engagement during leisurely app usage

Implement lightweight, non-intrusive recommendations that effectively provide user feedback without disrupting the overall user experience flow

Group Ordering

User Flow

The Group Ordering feature incentivizes shoppers to view and add items to a shared cart, providing group discounts when they check out together. This feature not only makes shopping more affordable but also encourages social interaction and validation through collective purchasing decisions.

Testing & Iteration: Waiting Status

As thredUp shopping cart only reserves item for user for only 1h, an additional layer of urgency is embedded in the ordering and checkout process of online thrifting. Nudging friends to finalize their cart is an unexpected common scenario during our testing

Before

After

Users struggle to quickly understand who is ready in the order process, especially with a long vertical scroll in cases of multiple items or users

There's a need for an easier way for users to nudge friends to complete orders, as doing so through external communication platforms is overly inefficient

A passive, in-interface nudge feature is preferred to subtly emphasize the urgency of finalizing items, enhancing user experience without being intrusive

Testing & Iteration: Inviting Experiences

In group ordering scenarios, users often find forming a group and sharing invitations to be a cumbersome process. Streamlining this aspect is crucial to minimize user friction and facilitate smoother group order creation

Before

After

Users prefer inviting in-app existing friends group to group orders than select individual friends from scratch

There's an use case for inviting friends from external platforms at this later stage, necessitating a flexible external invitation mechanism in the app design

Horizontal friend/group search is less efficient on vertical screens, suggesting a redesign for better usability

Vertical scrolling is more in line with user habits, indicating a need for vertical navigation in contact lists for enhanced user experience

Collborative Collection

User Flow

Collaborative Collection feature allows users to create shared collections with friends or family, where they can add, remove, or comment on items together in real-time. This feature aims to bring the social and leisure aspects of in-person shopping to the online platform, aiding in alleviating indecisiveness by allowing for immediate feedback and interaction.

Testing & Iteration: Conversion

Testing highlighted the user's need for organizing items into various wishlists. In discussions with the product management and operations teams, the emphasis was placed on enhancing the conversion from social engagement to actual order placements. Consequently, we focused on integrating multiple features to offer users greater editing flexibility within their wishlists.

Before

After

Horizontal tool bar overlaps over bottom navigation bar, leading to confusion and user error

User sometime restricted by only being able to interact with their own item. Allowing greater flexibility is needed for a more streamlined approach

A need efficient / one lick transition from wishlist curation to the ordering process, aligning with business objectives

Testing & Iteration: Social Interaction

Casual and lightweight social interactions are fundamental to the appeal of offline thrifting, offering a sense of community and connection. In translating this experience online, it's essential to embed similar social dynamics into the UX. By incorporating features that facilitate easy, informal interactions, we can recreate the sense of camaraderie and reassurance that drives engagement in the physical thrifting space, thereby enhancing the overall experience in online thrift shopping

The binary nature of the thumbs up/thumbs down system may not accurately reflect user sentiments, leading to misinterpretations and reduced engagement due to its limited expressiveness

Over-reliance on this over-simplified feedback mechanism could discourage nuanced user interactions, undermining a rich, engaging experience

The presentation of social interactions lacks optimization for user gratification, diminishing its effectiveness in providing the reassurance essential for a vibrant online community

Predominant use of the thumbs up reaction results in a monotonous interaction pattern, limiting expressive communication among users

Design System

Design systems were heavily adopted through out the design process
Based on the wishlist feature, we expanded on item card and banners, that would be implemented across the entire mobile and web platform

Final Design

Notified Recommendation

Maximizing user exposure to items endorsed by trusted friends, thereby boosting user confidence and sales conversions.

Sending / Receving Recommendation

Replicate the thrill of offline thrifting online, giving users more reasons to explore and enhancing item visibility, while fostering cross-user reassurance to boost overall engagement and sales.

Add to Wishlist

Foster a vibrant community of style enthusiasts sharing unique fashion choices, aiming to transform active browsing into increased sales conversions across the platform

Wishlist to Cart

Maximize conversion rates by streamlining the user journey, eliminating unnecessary obstacles to create a seamless and efficient purchasing process

Wishlist Interactions

Cultivate a community-driven shopping experience, where micro social interactions and mutual encouragement among users elevate sales conversions through increased purchase motivation

Initialize Group Order

Boost group order initiation on our thrifting platform by offering financial incentives for users, promoting a stress-free and economically rewarding group ordering experience

Finalize group order

Enhance user trust and drive higher conversion rates through peer-based reassurance in online thrifting, fostering more confident purchasing decisions

Reflection

Reframing the problem

Recognized the importance of understanding the client's needs beyond initial assumptions, leading to a more effective and user-centered design solution.

Stakeholder Communication

Successfully engaged with stakeholders to align the project with their vision, ensuring that the design met both user needs and business objectives.

Designing within constraints

Learned the significance of creativity and flexibility when working with limited resources, optimizing the use of available tools and techniques.

Managing complex user flow

Gained insights on breaking down complex user flows into manageable components, which helped in creating a more intuitive and user-friendly interface.

Rapid user testing

Could have leveraged more frequent and rapid user testing sessions. This method would have facilitated quicker design iterations based on real-time user feedback, leading to a design process that is more adaptive and centered around user needs.

Fluency in design system

Recognizing the significance of design systems in creating consistent and efficient designs. Improved fluency would have enhanced the efficiency and quality of the design work, ensuring better alignment with established design standards and practices.

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