Feature Prioritization

UX Team Size: Julia Purcell and Jonathan Garcia | Duration: 2 weeks | Project Status: Complete

My Role: UX Designer

Project Overview
Letgo is a free, person-to-person, web and mobile classified app, allowing users to locally buy and sell items they want to let go.

Capture the current mobile app experience of letgo and internalize the comparative analysis of the UI from other marketplaces — through screen shots of the on-boarding process, letgo verification process of the user through email and social media presence — Twitter or Facebook, and posting a real item for sale. Interact with letgo users who were interested in buying the item.  Backcast how might we improve upon the UI with an in-app transaction feature.

Limitations, Parameters, Resources, and Materials

We were limited by the amount survey responses from social media. We luckily found letgo users and unfortunately we were not able to utilize them for the usability test. From our pool of participants the majority were eBay and craigslist users.

We were tasked with adding an in-app payment feature to the existing marketplace. Targeting iPhone users.

We utilized Google Forms for surveys, photography and digital audio recording for documentation, Trello for task management, Slack and Google Hangouts Meet for remote collaboration, Sketch for our mid and night fidelity wireframes, and then InVision for testing our prototype.

Initial Problem Statement
Currently, letgo buyers and sellers have to coordinate payment details with one another and arrange to meet in-person to perform the transaction. This creates uncertainty and safety concerns around the transaction. How could we integrate a secure in-app payment feature into “letgo” that fosters a uniform virtual transaction experience for both buyers and sellers?

How did we confirm or refine our initial assumptions?
Letgo buyers and sellers found that making in-person cash transactions could be unpredictable and occasionally unsafe. How might we implement a secure in-app payment feature in letgo that is secure and reputable?

We believe that integrating an in-app component to transact and record payments via a trusted third-party institution would allow letgo users to reduce the risk involved with buying goods from unknown individuals. We will know this to be the case when users report an increased willingness to purchase goods through the letgo marketplace.

Research Phase

We’ve conducted 5 interviews with volunteers who responded to our survey screener.

The demographic and user behavior data from the survey informed our design in the ideation phase of the personas of Jeremy and Cameron. Here’s the data and demographic of marketplaces, payment behavior, age group and gender on the survey.

Women are the minority

Interview Insights

We affinity mapped the findings from our interviews and developed the following “I” statements that informed our personas goals and needs.

  • I prefer a trusted, reputable brand-name system like PayPal or Venmo for online or in-app financial transactions
  • I want assurance from customer service
  • I prefer to collect goods in-person
  • I use online marketplaces to both buy and sell goods
  • I appreciate when sites take steps to verify user’s identity
  • I’m a little nervous about sending digital payments

Meet Jeremy and Cameron

We knew that the users prefer the convenience of cashless transactions and assurance to report a problem with the transaction using digital transaction such as PayPal. Here they are.

From our interview insights discovered two personas who’s need an in-app payment option.

Design Ideation Phase

We conducted seven rounds of Design Studio in person and remotely. That entailed pitching designs and then merging the best ideas. We’ve moved from low fidelity to mid fidelity.

Feature Prioritization

Using the MosCow method we’ve prioritized the features to be implemented in our prototype and move on to testing.

From Research to Findings 🕵️

These are the evolution of the buyer’s screens with an “make offer” option. Photo credit Jonathan Garcia

Usability Tests and Iterations 👨‍🔬

We’ve conducted three rounds of usability testing with thirteen New York City based participants.

Scenario + task:

Seller

  • You are trying to get rid of an old tv and you posted one for sale on the app letgo. Check if any buyers have made you an offer and accept it.
  • You have received an offer on the television you put up for sale on letgo. You accepted the buyer’s offer and he wants to chat with you to set up payment. Communicate with the buyer and confirm that you have received the payment.

Buyer

  • You see a TV set posted on letgo and want to make an offer to purchase it from the seller. Make the seller an offer of $50 for the TV set.
  • Your offer of $50 for the TV set has been accepted by the seller. Communicate with the seller and send him or her a payment through the app via PayPal

Round #1 of Usability Testing:

We’ve conducted test with 5 participants with our mid-fidelity wireframe using InVision App.

  • 5 out of 5 users successfully completed seller tasks
  • 3 out of 5 users successfully complete the buyer tasks

User feedback:

  • Found the app to be simple and easy to use overall, however some button placements were not ideal, and some screens in the buyer flow were deemed unnecessary
  • Maps of the seller’s location shown on the purchase screens were somewhat confusing.
  • Expected more direct communication between buyer and seller
    Felt comfortable using Paypal as the method of payment due to brand familiarity and security features

Design iteration #1 👩‍🎨

Based on the first round of testing and our own internal research and observations, the following changes were implemented in a higher fidelity prototype:

  • Chat screens were added so direct communication between buyer and seller was more evident.
  • Placement and labeling of purchase button was adjusted to increase visibility and clarity.
  • Additional pop-up screen indicating confirmation of submitted offer was added.
  • Payment screen flow was revised to more accurately reflect the actual PayPal purchase process.

Rounds #2 & #3 of Usability Testing

We conducted 5 usability tests in our 2nd round, and 3 usability tests in our 3rd round with high fidelity wireframes to match the interactivity of letgo app.

  • 5 out of 5 users successfully completed seller tasks, while 3 out of 5 users completed buyer tasks effectively in round 2
  • 3 out of 3 users were able to successfully complete buyer and seller tasks in round 3
  • 1 user requested a “mark as sold button” in the second round of testing the seller screen, mirroring the actual interface of letgo

When asked to navigate to their offers in the 3rd round of testing, 3 users on the buyer home screen overwhelmingly clicked on the profile icon instead of the notification tab.

Two users were confused by the canned texts offered on the product page for the buyer, finding them unnecessary.

Design iteration #2 & #3 example

Buyer’s revised screen. Removed the confusing canned responses and replaced it with “make offer”. Photo credit Julia Purcell and Jonathan Garcia, and moi.

Based on feedback we focused on revising the buyer screens

  • The ability to navigate to offers via the profile button on the buyer screen was added
  • Canned texts were deleted
  • The “mark as sold” button was added at the end of the seller flow

Here’s the Prototype 🚀 (they’re not working right no because I’m over quota)

Buyer prototype

Click here to view the project Letgo Buyer Screen v3

Seller prototype

Click here to view the project Letgo Seller Screens - Revised

Next Step 💼

Capitalize on strong user feedback (one developer even declared our design to be “great UI”) to build up features even more

Based on user feedback, in the future we will:

  • Make ratings more accessible for buyers / sellers
  • A/B testing of button placement for buyers / sellers
  • Consider ways to make letgo feel safer for female users

We look forward to working with the letgo team on implementing this feature!

Reflection 🙇

I learned a great deal about collaboration and design alignment challenges that I’ve encountered on this project with my team. I’ve inquired with my peers and UX industry friends about how to overcome these challenges. It’s best to accommodate the teams needs and know when to delegate a task to someone who is proficient in visual design, prototyping, or research. Instead we took the approach that everyone has a chance to try various roles. I learned that it wasn’t ideal to divide the work among the team.

I would have preferred to focus on the visual design of the hi-fidelity prototype and the presentations.

Then again, from my observation, given the opportunity of working together. I learned the strengths and weakness of our varying work styles. I was very collaborative and communicative in the team. Both Julia and Jonathan acknowledge my collaborative and iterative process was great however they’re learning a new process within the parameters we had. They preferred to work alone and they did benefit from meeting in-person to align the goals. We learned that we have different work styles. It’s great to have worked together in-person in order to sync up the insights after conducting usability test and iterate the features further. We didn’t have the opportunity to do so at the start because it was preferred to delegate the tasks and work alone. I felt it put me at a disadvantage in communication. It was in goodwill of learning the flow. I was happy that we focused on a data-driven design and which made it all come together in the end.

The takeaways — how do you harmonize and align the team?

  • Discuss and adapt to each others work styles and come together after reaching one’s milestone
  • Learn what is the team’s communication parameters and frequency of checking in
  • Discuss each members proficiency and comfort level of any role they prefer
  • Get everyone on-board to using to task management system such as Trello for tracking milestones, or other system task management Google Keep(?)
  • Delegate design to a team member who is proficient at it
  • Sync up as soon as possible and often (standups were great for this)

In hindsight, I really love taking the initiative of using Trello and syncing it up to our Slack channel with the notifications of checklist when they’re complete / incomplete. I thought it kept communication among us to a minimal for the completed items — we just see what’s getting done without launching Trello. When we met and had done standups that’s when I was informed of accomplishments and goals. I’d check it off for them — Trello would then post a notification to our channel.

I’ve unchecked all and just kept Checklist Item Marked Complete/Incomplete. Otherwise it would be to noisy or spammy for our Slack channel.

Tracking the team’s milestones throughout the project’s phases was beneficial and challenging in ways of staying aware and aligned. This was instrumental in my own leadership and organizational skills. I made sure of initiating the standups at every team meetings.

It helped me be aware of my team member’s task. I accommodated by jotting down our next task or goals and what was getting accomplished.

My UX friends pointed out that I’ve got leadership traits. Come to think of it they’re right. The team acknowledged the great things that came of this collaboration — constant iteration and testing to validate our assumptions.

Our trello board which I maintained for the team. Kept track of task and deliverables.

Implementing an in-app payment feature for letgo was originally published in Victor de la Cruz | UX UI Portfolio on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.