4FREE
Timeline
2018
Type
Marketplace
An innovative app making unwanted item donation incredibly easy and hassle-free.
Company
Challenges & Responsibilities
→ Research user behaviour to address why people amass items and struggle to recycle, enhancing recycling efforts.
→ Enhance brand perception by rectifying user experience issues, preventing negative perceptions from spreading.
→ Simplify communication for seamless item exchange between users, boosting engagement.
→ Improve user satisfaction by streamlining processes, establishing the platform as synonymous with efficiency.
Role
UX/UI Designer
Overview
4FREE is a start-up company founded in 2015 and based in Germany. The 4FREE’s mission was to create an app where users could donate unwanted items with minimal effort while also benefitting our environment. In this case study, our goal was to improve the app for a better and more pleasant user experience (iOS).
Product-centric approach
The problem
Environment
People accumulate old items in their homes that they don't need anymore, and after a certain period, they will usually discard them without recycling.
4FREE app
The company was starting to lose users because the app had several bugs and a poorly-designed user interface which resulted in a poor user experience.
Research
Get the view of the big picture.
Kickoff meeting
At the start of this project, the 4FREE app was already developed for Android. So, I started to do a workshop with the client, research on different points of possible feedback and analyse where the real problems stemmed from
Usability & Functionality
The company was starting to lose users because the app
had several bugs and a poorly-designed user interface
which resulted in a poor user experience.
Accessibility & Performance
The main concerns of the users were the constant errors
and the outdated design. Due to these problems users were uninstalling and not bothering with the app altogether.
I decided to do competitor analysis, user interviews,
a persona, and affinity mapping for this initial improvement process of the app and understand the users even better.
Insights
Scheduling process 🚨
Users found the scheduling system frustrating due to its complex UI and lengthy process.
Concerns about the environment 🚨
Some users questioned the company's environmental impact through user donations, leading them to explore alternative platforms.
Appearance of the app 🚨
Some users expressed doubts about the app's credibility due to its overly pink colour, disorganised layout, leading to a lack of confidence in its usability.
How might we…
How might we improve the experience using the 4FREE app?
How might we simplify the communication between the users?
From these two questions, I started creating and designing possible solutions to improve the app. The aim was to create a minimalistic design and reduce the user-friction.
Wireflow
Next, I sketched out the basic layout. I started to design the user flow with low-fidelity wireframes.
The goal was to create the fewest steps possible to complete the task.
Wireflow for the “receiving” user, who is looking for an item.
Wireflow for the “offering” user, who is posting an item.
Designs
Request an item
Here, you can search for an item, and when you are happy with the item you’ve found, you need to request a booking. Then you must wait for confirmation of the request.
Schedule your time
After you’ve added and uploaded the pictures of the item,
you need to set up your availability in your schedule.
What’s next
The next steps were to release a beta version of the app
to the Apple store to get initial impressions from users.
Meanwhile, we planned to conduct one-to-one user interviews to see how successfully they complete particular user journeys, get feedback for potential improvements to the app, and to fix bugs if that occurs.
Takeways
Being patient
Taking an already-built app with many existing problems posed a massive challenge and with constant changes become even more difficult.
At the end of the day, I’m proud of the work I did for this project.
Going beyond
This project pushed me out of my comfort zone and required me to search for simple solutions to these problems. Sometimes limitations and difficult situations make us more creatives..