Trash Nothing App UI Redesign
Sup readers. “Damn I need to get rid of a chair but, no one would buy it in the state it’s in, and I’m against fly-tipping”. Trash Nothing, better known as ‘Freecycle’ has brought together the community of furniture and accessory owners looking to rehome them.
The experience
“That old storage box needs a new home, why not give it away for free”. Freecycle’s user experience gets by, like a Nissan Micra but it’s not very pretty or intuitive, which doesn’t fill me with joy in investing time navigating the product or building a profile of ‘saved’ items.
The key things that struck me on the browse page were the inconsistent sizes of images and the amount of scrolling required to find something relatively interesting. The top navigation appears untidy with label text and icon following my journey like an unwelcomed Mr Miyagi. “Let me be free I squawked, I’ll be sure to reunite with you on the browse page I promise.”
The makeover
These are the new colours used in order to establish a more pastel earthy colour scheme that fit the objective of being eco-friendly, peaceful and visually engaging. The blend of the two main colours ‘the green’ and ‘orange’ are cohesive and complementary to the overarching goals of the brand and product.
In order to increase the intuitiveness of the browse page, establishing what features and click-throughs were imperative to user experience.
Searching for products
Posting a product
Profile page
Select the location you want to view products from
Filter button
Activating visibility of ‘offers’ and ‘requests’ on the feed
Newly posted products and it's information
What was added:
Notification bell for updates
‘What you need’ - for quicker results based on selected interests or frequently visited categories/hashtags, (a sliding carousel) and ‘see all’. It’s important to tell the user what they may need from the get-go as the Medium app does once registered. This yields better retention as users feel they’re getting the most value from the product. The results action which triggers small dopamine rushes are ‘seeing something you like’ that’s in range, available for pickup now
Bookmarking products from browse screen for instant investment (prompts signup if not logged in or registered)
Tab navigation bar at the bottom for quick access to home (browse), post a new product, bookmarks and user profile page
In order to increase the intuitiveness of the product page, establishing what features and click-throughs were imperative to user experience.
Photos of the product
Back button
Product name
Location
How long ago it was posted
Date it was posted
User name and profile page
Share
Description
Make an offer
Bookmark
Report
What was added:
Hashtags
Category icon
Profile picture of user (creating a trusted community of users)
The make an offer button (will prompt signup if not registered) - one less ‘visual’ barrier to goal
Recommendations:
Location button takes you to an enlarged map page (less loading on the app and currently it doesn’t work very well)
Time or date is more than enough (instead of both)
Share button, higher in the visual hierarchy - (WOM) is the cheapest and strongest form of driving growth (emphasise this)
Bookmark button, higher in the visual hierarchy for more user engagement
Free label - more visual (emphasises there are no hidden catches)
There’s no point showing micro thumbnails of other product photos in the carousel when they’re barely visible to the eye
Hashtags are your friend (like the Stereo app does). It uses the top-level category as the first hashtag then more granular specific tags to follow (there’s a limit on 3 total tags you can use)