A 12-hour, team hack-a-thon project to design a marketplace for artists to sell their work and old supplies.
Platform: Website
My Roles: User flows, Sketching, UI Design
An artist, Annie Riker and a data scientist, Kevin Markham wanted to solve the problem of artists needing a simple, trustworthy space to sell their old materials to buyers at yard sale prices. Our team of two designers and two web developers volunteered to take on Annie and Kevin’s problem in a 12-hour sprint.
At the conclusion of our first meeting with Annie and Kevin, their list of must-have features composed of robust artist profiles, ability to upload art work, social network integration, item search by category, and keyword tagging.
To kick things off we mapped out out a user flow that included key features and screens displaying the onboarding process of a new user artist wanting to sell an item. We determined this would be a key user flow to sell to our hack-a-thon judges to show what would be the most common and valuable experience.
With our features nailed down we sketched out six total screens, myself concentrating on the sign-in page, profile creation page, and user profile page.
The following screens present our team’s vision of the typical experience for a seller using the marketplace and posting their very first item for sale.
We felt it was important to a create a simple, engaging homepage to cater to the eye of our intended users while highlighting vital call to actions such as the sign up button.
While mapping our flow it was important to us that both types of new users could easily identify and engage with their proper initial sign-up experience. Anna and Kevin wanted sellers to create comprehensive, trustworthy profiles, while allowing a minimal barrier to entry to jump right into the market, mimicking that of an actual yard sale.
A clear and concise sign up experience is always the right way to go.
Once profile creation is complete the user is presented a full page layout with important call to actions living at the top of the page along with item history and seller reviews.
We wanted the process of posting pictures and providing necessary sales information to be as simple as possible while also allowing sellers to add tags which will make their items easy to search for by potential buyers.
The final sale item page provides a clean layout with clear presentation of necessary call to actions and information.
After a mercurial 12 hours, third place was the ultimate result, but of course still proud of the work we produced. Being involved in my first hack-a-thon environment was a great experience to really test my limits while trying to generate thoughtful work in a pressure cooker. Unpredictability as uncomfortable as it may be only strengthens your focus and has taught me to relish the discomfort rather than shrink from it.