An online platform that encourages college students to exchange goods for reducing waste produced.
Students' needs for daily items change rapidly. How to introduce a new object flow model that will contribute to a sustainable environment and avoid wastes created came to my mind. Co-created with Katherine Zhao, we brought up the concept of Oh Swap.
Let's meet Ilter and Sally!
Ilter: Junior ECE at CMU
Recent Quit Coffee and moved Off-Campus.
Bigggest book worm.
Sally: Freshman at CMU
Recently moved to Campus from home. Brought lots of stuff from home but oftentime finds herself in needs of more.
Quick browse & Request Sending
While scrolling on her phone, Sally saw a coffee mug and really liked it. She decided to send a swap request. She saw from owner Ilter's profile that he's a bookworm so she decided to offer her book basket.
Like it? Just a few taps to complete!
Ilter received the Swap request and saw Sally’s offering. He was just stressed about not having more place to place his book. so he accepted the swap request right away.
No time to meet? Request a swocker
Due to Ilter's busy schedule, Ilter and Sally aren’t able to meet up in person. They decided to request a swocker, which is a physical space in the University Center provided by Oh Swap that serves as a temprorary storage box. It can be accessed by a bar code sent to both Ilter and Sally’s phones.
Research:
"Everyone has stuff they don't use anymore but not doing anything about it"
The research initially started with "What do I do about clothes that I don't wear anymore?" Through conducting survey and user research, we shifted the focus from "Clothes" to daily items. Through user research, we defined three kinds of user needs among students. Urgent for long terms, urgent for short terms and not necessary but still want.
Explore Design Opportunity: What's broken and what to improve
We constructed models to understand the pain points in the system. A flow model is used to mark the breakdowns in the current Object flow systems.
Key Areas for Improvement
1. Sustainability
How can we introduce a cycled object flow to minimize waste? “I don’t want to buy a dress everytime I go to the banquet!”
2. Efficiency
How can we break the barrier of students’ busy schedule? “It just didn’t happen because we never had time to meet.”
3. Budgeting
How can we meet students’ need with minimum money transaction? “Always running out of the budget."
Ideation & Prototyping
“I like this idea.. It sounds almost like a scavenger hunt!” - Lana.L Senior
Targeting at the areas of imporvements, we quickly drew down these ideas and then drew them into storyboarding and tested with more than 20 students and received great response on the concpet of Oh Swap.
Why Swap
Through Swapping, students can get rid of things they don't really need without having to go through the process of money transaction, but the same time get something more useful in return. This Swapping process is not only more economical than "Buying", but also promotes a sustainable environment of object flow on Campus.
What's a swocker?
Inspired by the Japanese Rental box. Swocker is a physical space provided by OhSwap at the university center that serves as a temporary locker. Student can exchange the item at a trust-worthy environment without having to meeting up in person.
Challenge in IA:
"How do we coordinate all features on one platform?
A challenge we faced was how to coordinate all the features on one platform, and put an emphasis on “Swapping” at the same time. At first, we tried to group info by "Home, Search, Add, Profile". After several times of iterations, we decided to separate “Swap” as the main feature from the specific search. This is to target at both passive users who are just casually browsing and active users who have specific needs in mind.
Responsive Hi-Fi Design
We wanted the UI design to be minimal yet interesting. Setting the main background color tone to be white & gray, we use light pink and green as a highlight to bring more "youth" and "fun" to the interface. We also saw the needs for the App to be cross-platform.
let's break it:
Redesigning Swap Process.
"Love it! When are yall bringing it out on campus?"
"What's the chance of my offer being accepted?"
From all the people we tested the idea with, some of them can't wait already. However, we also heard concerns that doubting if Oh Swap can actually work on the college campus. The biggest concern is that “One to One” swap model is hard to apply in large scale and there’s no way to know if “Swappers” are credible.
In the redesign, we proposed the idea of “Oh Swap Dollars” to potentially solve these problems. “Oh Swap Dollars” are imaginary dollars approximately represent the value of objects ready to be swapped, and users are able to use “Oh Swap Dollars” to “Purchase” things they are interested in. In addition, “Oh Swap Dollars” will appreciate or depreciate based on users’ credibility rated by others. We are currently still exploring this idea and would love to see Oh Swap becoming a real product.