Shareable allows users to rent and lend items in a safe and secure way. Users can rent items from camping equipment and tools to sporting gear and decor. Renters save money by avoiding expensive purchases and lenders earn extra cash on items that would otherwise go unused
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As part of my education, myself, one other UX designer and a UX researcher were tasked with designing a mobile app that would allow users to rent and lend their unused stuff. I contributed to research, ideation, wire framing, prototyping, usability testing, and the final design, including the design system & branding.
Most people end up accumulating an abundance of items that they only need or use a few times a year. Items like camping equipment, tools, sporting gear, home decor, or office/cleaning equipment. Regardless of the type of item, everyone has their own unique list.
Keeping track of these infrequently-used items is a huge challenge not to mention finding a place to store them. For most people the only options are to find space at home, which usually results in a cluttered mess. Or keep everything in a storage unit elsewhere which is inconvenient and costly. What if it was possible to make money off of these items without the burden of storing and keeping track of them? What about rentals with the option to purchase?
Design a mobile experience offering on-demand rentals that appeals to both someone offering their "stuff" available for rent and someone looking to rent someone else's "stuff".
We started out with a survey to better understand our audience. We found that 57% of those surveyed would feel comfortable lending out items to strangers.
With that said, we began to see a trend. People were overwhelmingly concerned with how strangers would treat their items. Particularly that items would come back damaged, or not come back at all.
We also found that 63% of those surveyed would prefer to have an assigned drop-off location vs arranging it themselves.
Once we had a couple insights we wanted to delve into those more in depth. In our interviews we began to see a trend among women, that selling things online has been mostly positive, but quickly got into that fact that their are occasions where things get weird and sometimes unsafe. From unsolicited texts, being hit on and asked out by complete strangers; women frequently have to take extra steps to ensure they are safe when buying and selling items online.
“I guess sometimes as a woman I don’t feel very safe meeting strangers, that is something I always have to be aware of. Make sure I’m being safe about meeting in a public place, not letting them into my house or going into their house.”
A thirty year old science teacher who loves camping and kayaking with her nieces and nephews. She loves going out and doing her favorite activities, but doesn’t have the space (or money) to purchase all the gear she wants. Renting locally allows her to enjoy the outdoors as her time and budget allows.
Pain Points
1. Doesn’t want her time to be wasted
2. Worried about what to do if she accidentally damages the item
3. Wants to be able to pick up her stuff as planned, on her time table
Goals
1. Have a safe and efficient way to rent items
2. Save money
3. Enjoy her hobbies
Both my teammate and I each went through what we thought would be the necessary and logical steps to create a minimally viable product. We mapped out the user flow and found a fair amount of overlap. This first picture shows the card sort once we had put them together and began making connections.
The second image we eliminated duplicates and made the process more concise.
This lead us into our story map. Based on our goal of making renting items safer for women, we created a two sections; one to “Safely Lend Items” and the other to “Safely Rent Items”. We found that there was a fair amount of crossover, and decided to focus on the renters journey, as that would be what the majority of users would be using.
We agreed that the best way to make it safe and efficient for people like Alison to rent stuff from their community, would be to take out the interaction between lender and renter. We opted to have lenders drop off their item at a secure facility at their convenience. Then when it came time to rent, renters would be able to go to the facility, pick up the item on their timetable (no trying to find a convenient time to meet up), and go enjoy their item, with no interaction between parties.
To address concerns brought up in our research about damage and theft of items, we included requisite damage reports, and of course insurance through the app in case of any instances of damage or theft.
Our initial prototype we built out the processes of browsing and searching for an item, renting that item, picking it up at a convenient location, rating the condition of the item, then returning the item.
We quickly realized that to get things working, sometimes you need way more screens than expected. We initially thought we could get by with 27 screens. But wanting to get an authentic idea of how users would actually interact, we added 84 additional screens to allows users to actually make a choice when it came time to select an item.
In our usability tests, we asked them to rent an item on a specific date, return that item, and rate the quality of the item. Users described it as straightforward, easy, and overall had no problems. The one flaw that our users did consistently run into was confusion when it came time to rate the condition of the item. We intended for the six dots on the item screen to show the images they could swipe through. Participants thought the six dots would allow them to rate the condition. Users became frustrated and tried to click on the dots to no avail.
One of the first things we changed was how we showed that their were additional images to be viewed. We removed the confusing dots, and opted for a swipe-able option that showed the edge of the next image. We also condensed the home, category, and search page into one impactful page. As soon as users log on to the app, they can take action to rent or return an item, browse items and categories, and search for specific items. Finally, we majorly upgraded the aesthetics of the app to make things more interesting and enjoyable for the user. With that, we have shareable, a stuff sharing app that allows users to safely and conveniently rent and lend their stuff.
I would love to better show where users are at in the process. Doordash does an excellent job of showing you the four simples steps until your food is delivered. I think we could follow suite and keep our users more informed. I also would like to simplify some of the more information heavy pages like the order summary and item pickup and return. Finally I would love to do more user testing on this stage of the design to ensure it is a good fit with our target audience.
This was a fantastic first project. I thought that it was cool that it was purpose driven, our research and interviews influenced out design decisions throughout the process. I loved getting to make various components and prototyping them. I was most proud of the way it turned out aesthetically and think it is incredibly simple and enjoyable to use.
