FRAMER
Take a guess: What could all these people be so mad about?(Hint: It's just a 4-letter word!!)
PROBLEM
Impulsive buying is making us drown in our own unused stuff
SOLUTION
A social media platform that encourages sharing among neighbours
My Role
The project was done at the UX Design Bootcamp in Infosys Mysore from September to November 2019. I was part of a 4-member team involving Retail Experience, Visual & UX Designers. We approached the project in a 6-week design sprint, based on the design thinking methodology.
I got involved in various aspects of the process: from conducting initial user research and defining key personas, comparative analysis, laying vision, till preparing wireframes & hi-fidelity prototypes along with my team.
Our retail experience(Suman Sahoo) & visual designer(Aayushi Ramtekkar) helped us with branding and visual design of the platform.
THE CHALLENGE
Sharing over Buying
In the last decade, a new wave of peer-to-peer access driven businesses have shaken a range of established categories:
Hospitality and Dining: CouchSurfing, Airbnb, Feastly, LeftoverSwap
Automotive and Transportation: RelayRides, Uber, Lyft, Getaround, Quickride
Media and Entertainment: Amazon Family Library, Spotify, SoundCloud
This signalled a robust appetite among consumers for the sharing based economy. However, very few ventures(OLX, Rentomojo) explored the Retail & Consumer Goods segment in the market.
Our challenge was to persuade people to consider sharing as an option for items they are used to buying without even putting in a second thought.
COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS
High sense of community, low access to resources
The comparison was made on the basis of two most important value propositions offered by any P2P sharing model: sense of community & access to assets. This helped us identify the problems related to our problem space and position ourselves accordingly.
We wanted to give a high sense of community, for increased belongingness towards the assets.
But, to give them a limited access to resources just when they require them to fulfil their goal; suffice the ad-hoc requirements of people.
USER INSIGHTS
What’s beyond money?
A penny saved is a penny earned
Residents realize that a lot of things are left unused in their homes. Some even consciously pickup a cheaper alternative for less used things.
Buying without a second thought on e-commerce platforms
Our secondary research revealed that e-commerce websites use various features that affects consumers’ urge to buying impulsively. So we conducted an online survey with residents to know if they’re aware of the impulsive buying behavior while browsing through online stores.
Responses to when I go online shopping, I buy things I had not intended to purchase
Staying socially active
Some residents sought out to connect with neighbours on a regular basis( e.g. while walking their dogs, taking kids to playing area, strolling in the common area). Some even accepted to have befriended those who were just strangers once.
However, on having big picture of the connectedness between the neighbours in a society we knew much more could be done.
Desire to give back
Residents that had received help from their neighbours in the past always had a desire of reciprocating back those favours in any form(even if it’s not immediately).
THE DISCOVERY
What’s beyond money?
THE VISION
To be a place where neighbours get to know & interact with each other by sharing their belongings safely & conveniently.
Place Sharesquare that gives an opportunity to open up to their neighbours in a more humane, subtle manner.
Neighbours of a particular housing society/colony so that it’s easy to build a habit; ensure a sense of responsibility.
Know & interact with neighboursy giving them an excuse to ring each others bell and help each other push themselves out of the solitary boxes.
Sharing as an experience; making it less transactional and more emotional.
Ensuring safety of the thing being shared & convenience of both the parties being involved in sharing
PERSONA
How Prabal finds out a cricket kit & a college alumni in his own society?
Verifies personal & apartment details
Searches & requests the kit from a neighbour
Prabal checks out various fun stories of neighbours sharing things. This helps him place his trust over the app & search for a cricket kit. He finds a suitable kit.
He requests help from the neighbour on checking more details & previous sharing stories. His request gets accepted and both of them set a common meeting time.
Rings the bell, gets acquainted & picks up
Prabal gets to the neighbour’s apartment & rings the bell. While familiarizing more, he gets completely surprised to find out that the neighbour also happens to be a college senior.
He checks the kit physically & decides to pick-up. Prabal gets a picture clicked with the neighbour to confirm that he had received help.
Returns the kit with a pizza treat
Prabal was very happy for being able to participate in the tournament. He felt really thankful to the neighbour for helping him & wanted to reward something back.T
he app makes him realize that he had saved worth more than 4 pizzas by sharing the kit. This persuades him to reward his senior with a pizza treat!!
PERSONA
How Nivetha finds out a companion for playing lawn tennis?
Gets involved in the community by offering help
Nivetha was desperately searching for a way to manage the unused stuff when she gets to know about Sharesquare. She gets curious and signs up to try it out.She browses through a lot of happy sharing stories within her society.
This motivates her to get involved in the community. So, she decides to offer help to a neighbour looking for a lawn tennis racquet.
Provides more details of racquet
After a while, Nivetha receives a message from the neighbour requesting for more details on the racquet. The racquet seemed suitable to the neighbour and they go on to share it later on.
The neighbour also invites Nivetha to play. She was really happy to finally get lawn-tennis buddy for herself.