Many communities and neighborhoods that utilize online marketplaces have the option to exchange items in person. While most marketplaces make it relatively simple for sellers to increase exposure of items to be sold to people nearby, the process that follows: converting a buyer's interest to a completed transaction is obscure and variable.
This issue is especially relevant for students, who rely on social media to ‘verify’ and communicate with the respective buyer or seller as a workaround for the lack of logistical and communicable structure of current online marketplaces.
acai is a digital marketplace that supports online transactions by addressing concerns of trust and security during purchases, and facilitates in person meetups through step-by-step planning. Using school email domains to verify identities, acai provides students access to a filtered online marketplace upon log in.
acai also serves as a third-party platform that provides escrow services for secure transactions. Money is withdrawn from the account upon purchase, held on acai, and is not transferred until buyer and seller have met in person and completed the transaction by scanning a QR code unique to each transaction.
The developed app, though not released on any app store, was presented in a poster session and reviewed by Carnegie Mellon University students and faculty. The following responses were collected from people who tried out the demo.
"The design is impressive. It covers all of the aspects that are necessary in a mobile marketplace, and includes some features with unique utility."
"I would definitely use this...there is so much uncertainty when buying and selling things online, and this app would help alleviate my fear of being scammed."
We stumbled across the problem space during a casual conversation about music, specifically Coachella. Last year I had purchased my ticket from a stranger on Facebook for a killer price; I got lucky. A friend who tried to do the same did not get quite as lucky (to say the least), and ended up Venmoing $500 to a fellow UCLA student named Jessica, who, was neither a student at UCLA nor named Jessica.
In order to reduce the problem of online purchasing scams, we hypothesized that an intermediary platform that holds a buyer’s money before a transaction takes place would ease anxiety and concerns over purchasing items from strangers online.
We conducted semi-structured interviews with a variety of people who frequently engage in online transactions with strangers:
When talking to a few students about purchasing items online, many of them mentioned the use of Facebook groups where university students buy and sell items with each other. These students expressed a preference for these student groups over the Facebook Marketplace because they felt they could trust the members in the group.
Survey results from 30 participants revealed that a majority of university students rely on Facebook groups as a way to connect with those in their community to buy and sell items. While such social media platforms do allow people to view profiles for an added dimensionality of transparency between a buyer and a seller to increase trust, these profile identities cannot be fully verified. As a result, users are still largely susceptible to scams.
In order to get a deeper sense of the how students utilize current Facebook groups to buy and sell items, I mapped out one of the participant's journey of selling a bookshelf to another student.
In creating this journey map, our team was able to identify a few painpoints that we sought to resolve. Though the user journey map only looked at the experience of selling in a Facebook group, these painpoints ultimately reflect the lack of a 'go to' platform for students to buy, sell, and exchange items in person.
After aggregating and synthesizing the interviews, we were able to arrive at a few insights that informed product design aspects.
Trust is a form of emotional currency. The more trust there is between parties, the more likely the transaction is to occur.
Buyers and sellers experience convoluted messaging exchanges to decide on a time and place to meet.
Sellers need a buyer’s confirmation of intent to purchase and pick up an item, while buyers need reassurance that the seller is legitimate before providing such confirmation
Trust plays a significant role in people's assessment, and eventual engagement in an online transaction. Looking back at the user journey map, our team determined two factors that impact trust:
The authenticity of the counterpart in a transaction (either a buyer or seller)
The security of money during the exchange
Our team sought to address both factors by considering the entire buying and selling experience from start to finish.
Other than trust and identity verification, these insights also indicated a need for a streamlined communication system that allows for more efficient meetups for buyers and sellers. To address this need, we broke down necessary meetup specifications into steps for both the buyer and seller to fill out and agree upon. These necessary steps involve where to meet (pickup vs. drop off), when to meet (listing availabilities), and placing a downpayment to confirm a buyer’s intention to purchase a product.
In order to evaluate the design, we conducted Think Aloud Protocol usability tests on three participants by having them carry out two specific tasks.
Message the seller of the bike.
Finish purchasing the bike from seller.
By having participants think aloud as they go through the tasks, we were able to hear their misconceptions, and turn these into actionable redesign recommendations. The TAP revealed a few findings that were then incorporated in iterations for the high-fidelity screens.
Seller’s preference for meetup location should be transparent in the marketplace listing
Participants in the TAP expressed confusion when they were unable to select an option for where to meetup. Having the seller’s preference highlighted in the listing would provide the buyer with additional information that may influence their decision of whether or not to purchase the item.
Location of pickup should be determined before time of pickup
Participants also mentioned that it ‘felt odd’ that they had to specifiy when to meet and then where. This could be due to the fact that users may find it more natural to make broad decisions first, and then more specific decisions.
Users experienced difficulty specifying available times due to compactness of the space to do so
Limitation of the screen size made it difficult for participants to select available times for each day of the week. Not only this, but participants also expressed the desire to be able to select half hour time slots for more specific availability listings. Restricting available times from 8 am. to 8 pm. was also something participants felt was a fairly limiting constraint.
Having users login with their university emails provide the necessary information to verify an individual’s identity or association with a specific school or community. In doing so, the marketplace has already been filtered to reduce the threat of scammers, increasing overall trust in the acai user-base.
Buyers list their availabilities for the selected week to provide sellers with the necessary information to determine a meet up time that aligns with both user’s schedules. This reduces the amount of remote back and forth messaging that is typically needed to decide on an agreed upon meet up time.
acai serves as a third-party platform that provides escrow services for users. Money is withdrawn from user’s accounts upon purchase, held on acai, and is not transferred until buyer and seller have met in person and completed the transaction.
QR codes unique to each transaction are used to confirm whether or not the item exchange has taken place between a buyer and a seller. Once the QR code is scanned, the item is removed from the marketplace, and the buyer’s money held on acai is transferred over to the seller.
Since the targeted user base is students, acai users would have very low willingness to pay for a subscription-fee and a flat-fee per product, no matter how minimal the price. Additionally, online marketplaces have similar problems where customers, when they get connected, exchange information and conduct the transaction “offline” without giving the platform their fair share.
Revenue options from this would be trivial and would not offer a sustainable business model. We plan to earn revenues using featured listing (80%) and advertising (20%).
Based on previous interviews, people also responded positively to paying a small price to boost their product if they want to get it noticed faster and by more users. This premium will help us different user segments and identify users with more willingness to pay.
For this project, I focused primarily on the user flow for the buyer's side. As for immediate next steps, I would like to design interfaces and consider user flows for the seller, and the process they would go through to upload on item to the marketplace.
Looking further down the pipeline, I would also like to consider integrating a secondary marketplace that involves the exchange of information and knowledge (as opposed to tangible items). I envision this sort of marketplace forum for students to connect with other students within universities. From interviews, one participant mentioned how departments operate in silos, and it can be difficult to connect with people in a different major.
I would like to have fleshed out the chat feature. Given the scenario of multiple buyers interested in a product, the seller would have to manage many conversations at a time. I would like to do more research to determine how sellers gage interest and prioritize certain buyers over others.
This prioritization could be based on authenticity of the buyer, how accommodating they are to the seller's meet up preferences, and even how much extra they are willing to pay for the item.
