Overview

Craigslist is a advertising company that operates an advertisement website with sections devoted to jobs, housing, for sale, items wanted, services, community service, gigs, résumés, and discussion forums. Known as a online marketplace, people often find themselves going on Craigslist to look, sell, or buy things locally. 

Role: Solo UI/UX Designer

Timeline: 20 weeks

Tools: Figma, Canva, Optimal Workshop

Problems

On Craigslist’s website, they seem to be unable to keep up with the modern design world. Its website lacks an organized space and embodies the representation of an outdated 2000s website. Along with this, Craigslist also lacks the features and aspects of easily navigable categories. Additionally, for inexperienced users, Craigslist can be overwhelming as a sheer volume of options, coupled with vague subcategories, can easily lead to mistakes. Conversely, experienced users who have spent years navigating Craigslist's virtual marketplace have developed a better understanding of its features. Meanwhile their mobile app faces the same problems with two other problems, these being that it’s hard to contact/communicate with sellers/listers, and the fact that it’s hard to trust sellers. Through this project, I wanted to better improve Craigslist’s navigation system and their overall visual design.

Goals & Process

I am enhancing the navigation features for Craigslist’s online site and mobile app. To solve this problem, I set out to minimize how many sections they had. To do this, I arranged for the head sections like jobs, housing, community, etc. to be the main focus. To make navigation for Craigslist easier, I added features like how-to steps, a more navigable chat system to buy things, and a neater homepage and products page. Additionally, by adding features like pill buttons and component cards, I was able to add a modern visual to the redesign. To solve the problem with communicating with sellers/listers, I made a chat system where you can easily contact them without giving away any unnecessary private information. Meanwhile, for trust issues, I thought of resolving this by making a rating system for sellers.

Heuristic Evaluation

Compared with the original Craigslist site and app, my strengths are:

• Search

• Visual Design

Lacking in:

• Task Orientation

• Navigation

From this I think I should focus more on making the app more navigable with the goal of making users focus on the task at hand, which is either shopping or selling listings.

Reflections

What I Learned: Through this project, I was able to learn more about components and auto-layout in Figma. I was also able to better use prototyping like input/output in text area. Lastly, I learned how usability and function is more important than the visuals/what users actually look for/rely on in a app/website setting.

Changes?: If I was given more time on this project, I would have liked to explore add more content in all of my sections. I also would’ve liked to experiment more with prototyping and if possible, I would’ve add two more screens, one screen that actually covers all the sections on Craigslist’s original site and the second screen, a location screen so that users can know that their sellers aren’t scammers.

All in all, I believe this project really helped me learn about the research involved in User Experience (UX). It underscored the importance of user-centered design and provided me with practical skills in Figma and prototyping that I can apply to future projects. The hands-on experience in balancing usability with visual elements has been invaluable, making me into a more thoughtful and effective designer.