Eco-Merce
What?
This is an online marketplace that allows users to buy and sell eco-friendly, 'green' products. Every item listed on the website is guaranteed to be made of sustainable materials and ethical labor practices. This vision includes the core principles of convenience, affordability, and variety.Why?
Every year we produce over 300 million tons of plastic -- that’s equivalent to 200 million Toyota Corollas -- with just half of that going to single-use plastic. If we continue in this direction, we’ll have more plastic in the ocean than fish by 2050.
Competitve-Analysis
With a marketplace perspective in mind, we wanted to stand out from what is current out there. So we performed a Competitive Analysis on 10 online marketplaces that sell eco friendly products. We learned that eco friendly marketplaces that exist today offer a wide range of prices and products. We then knew that the next step would be to figure out where our core user group of college students fit into this market space in terms of price range and product type.
Research
In order to validate our problem statement and competitive-analysis, we created a survey to see how the intended users currently and narrow down our scope to specific items. So, we created a survey to see how the intended users currently feel about ‘green’ products. From the results, we found that users:
- would choose a green option if it was not more expensive
- purchase personal care, cleaning products, and clothing
- do mind the ethical labor practices
Design (1st iteration)
In order to appeal to our audience, we drew inspiration from similar competitors and personalized websites
A huge inspiration was the apartment hunting website apartmentlist.com
Design (2nd Iteration)
We also wanted simplicity in our design, so we came across the Target website and reused some the navbar components into our design We started off by creating the base format of the website, such as the item displays.
Design (3rd iteration)
We used Figma to both design and prototype our marketplace. At the top of page, we have a “green” fun fact of the day. Below that there’s personalized matches for the user such as newly listed items and items to match their budget.
Design (4th iteration)
At the bottom of the home page, there’s a display of different categories the user can view and choose from. We wanted to keep things minimal and clear so we designed it with a responsive layout, with each category is presented in card with different colors and a large thumbnail to create a separation between them while simultaneously capturing all the important info for each category.
User Evaluation
We then took our interactive prototype and conducted usability tests with college students as participants. Each participant was asked to complete 3 tasks using the prototype and to give feedback on the current state of the UI.
Our participants liked that the layout of the content was easy to navigate and that the design centered around the user’s preferences
They also suggested making the text larger, choosing a more minimal color theme, and adding a shopping cart feature
Projects
What's Next?
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