Refind
Creating a safer, streamlined second-hand marketplace for University Students.
TYPE:
TIMELINE:
TEAM:
Yixuan (Asiya) Zhang
Tina Fan
Sabina Rafay
Student Project at UofT
4 months (Sept 2024-Dec 2024)
At a Glance…
Problem:
Challenge:
Solution:
University students want to buy and sell second-hand items but face barriers like scams, poor-quality listings, and the time-consuming nature of coordinating meetups through existing platforms.
PROBLEM STATEMENT:
How might we help university students feel safe, informed, and supported when buying/selling second-hand items?
Aligning product strategy and design to create a mobile app with a dual value proposition by addressing the distinct needs and pain points of two unique user groups.
Refind, a location-based, student-only digital marketplace that helps university students buy and sell second-hand items securely and efficiently.
By requiring university authentication, setting clear post requirements, and enabling in-app scheduling and payment with refund protections, Refind builds trust, reduces scams, and saves students time—all within the campus community.
Key Solution Features
Student Focused
Designed specifically for University students it requires campus authentication to join. Listings include filters tailored to student needs and exclusively feature meeting locations on campus for added convenience.
WHY?
Students are afraid of meeting up with unknown sellers in unknown locations. Students also have busy schedules and coordinating meetings off-campus can be time-consuming and tedious.
Seamless Purchasing
Students schedule a meeting time when purchasing the listing, they are able to choose the time, date, and campus location from the seller’s preset availability.
WHY?
Students find the process of scheduling a meeting time to be time-consuming and frustrating, often taking too much back and forth.
Transparent Listings
All listings include images and videos to give buyers a clear view of the item. When creating a listing, sellers are guided to provide key details identified as important to buyers, helping improve visibility and trust. Sellers can also easily set and update their availability for meetups.
WHY?
Student had quality concerns as one of their primary barriers to purchasing second-hand items, often citing that sellers feature few to no images. This provides support and guidance to both buyers and sellers.
↓ Let’s take a look at how we got here ↓
Empathize.
process.To better understand the existing problem space, user needs/pain points, and test our assumptions, we decided that we needed to first answer the following research questions:
(1) Do university students want to shop second-hand?
(2) How are university students currently shopping second-hand?
(3) What are common problems and pain points that university students face while shopping second-hand?
Research methods.Literature Review
Reviewed 6 academic and 4 non-academic sources to understand the existing research in the problem space, answer our key research questions, and identify gaps in current knowledge.
User Interviews
Conducted 8 interviews with target users (i.e. university students with experience buying or selling second-hand items) to uncover their expectations, needs, and pain points, and to fill gaps in our understanding of their experiences.
Competitive Analysis
Reviewed the existing user journey and experiences on 4 digital marketplace platforms and 2 traditional channels.
We chose these methods because they addressed our key research questions while allowing us to move efficiently within the constraints of a 4-month course and a limited budget for primary research and testing.
research insights.To synthesize and analyze the findings from our user interviews I created an affinity diagram and a research report that details all of the findings.
Here are some of the key takeaways:
1University students make up one of the largest groups of second-hand buyers and sellers. They choose to do so for reasons of convenience, saving money, and sustainability.
2University students gravitate towards buying second-hand items online.
65% of Gen Z and Millenials shopped second-hand in 2023 (ThreadUp, 2024).
8/8 Interview Participants confirmed that they primarily buy the majority of their items second-hand.
3/8 Interview Participants identified convenience as their primary motivator, 4/8 identified saving money, and 3/8 identified sustainability.
48% of Gen Z and Millenials prefer to buy second-hand online and of those, the majority prefer peer-to-peer marketplaces (Nodgorodtseva et al., 2020; ThreadUp, 2024).
8/8 Interview Participants indicated that they had used online second-hand shopping channels, with 7/8 preferring these digital channels to in-person shopping.
7/8 Participants primarily used peer-to-peer marketplaces (e.g. Facebook Marketplace) while one participant typically frequented managed marketplaces (e.g. Depop).
3There are three primary pain points that University students face when second-hand shopping: quality issues, security risks/concerns, and time.
72% of University students have identified quality issues with their second-hand shopping purchases (Wei et al., 2023).
8/8 of Interview Participants feared poor item quality when shopping second-hand.
5/8 Interview Participants feared scams and unreliable users when second-hand shopping online.
6/8 Interview Participants found the second-hand shopping process to be frustrating and time-consuming
Fashion-focused resale app offering in-app payment and reviews.
General peer-to-peer platform for buying and selling locally, also lacks user verification and safety features.
Physical retail spaces for second-hand goods. Limited in selection and require travel and time investment.
“I think my biggest concern is, like, the seller doesn’t tell us everything. Like, the seller can hide that the quality is bad.”
Competitive landscape:By analyzing digital marketplace platforms and traditional channels, we were able to evaluate how existing platforms support second-hand buying and selling as well as identify gaps in the experience for University Students.
Widely used peer-to-peer platform for buying and selling locally, but lacks user verification and safety features.
Define.
user personas.We created two user personas (buyer and seller) to capture the goals and pain points, ensuring our design decisions stayed aligned with their needs and addressing their existing pain points.
problem statement.Reduce friction by streamlining the communication and coordination process between buyers and sellers.
We crafted a problem statement to clearly define our users’ core challenges and guide the team toward a focused, research-driven design solution.
How might we help university students feel safe, informed, and supported when buying and selling second-hand items on campus?
design goals.I defined the following design goals to ensure our solution directly addressed the key pain points uncovered in research and stayed aligned with the needs and behaviors of our users throughout the design process.
Build trust between student buyers and sellers.
Enhance buyer confidence by reducing the harm of scams and no-shows.
Ideate.
brainstorming.To generate a large variety of user-centered ideas quickly we used “How Might We” questions paired with the Crazy 8s sketching method.
prioritization.We used the MoSCoW method to focus on features that would have the greatest impact on user needs while balancing time and feasibility constraints.
High Priority Features:
In-app Scheduling.
Buyers can choose from the sellers’ pre-listed availability (including time, date, and campus location) when deciding on a meeting time.
Creating Listings.
All posts must meet a certain number of image and video requirements.
task flows.In-app Purchasing.
Buyers can pay for the item in-app with the option of getting a refund if the seller fails to show up.
Location-based Listings & Student Authentication.
The application requires a university authentication to log in and displays listings based on the users’ campus location.
User Flow 1 - Lily the Budgeter searches for and purchases a listed item.
I outlined key points in the user journey to help map the end-to-end experience and visualize key user scenarios. My goal with the task flows was to balance similar competitior flows with our unique user needs.
To reduce cognitive load and improve efficiency, the process was broken up in to four stages: search, evaluate, schedule, and purchase. So we can look at minimizing friction at each point in the process - filters are pre-set based on common student categories, listings require clear media and preset campus pick-up points, and in-app scheduling removes the need for back-and-forth messaging.
Initial user flow — I decided on these steps for a user purchasing a listing after observing common patterns across competing second-hand marketplaces. The challenge was creating a purchasing task flow that felt intuitive and efficient, while accounting for key student concerns like safety, scheduling, and transparency.
Sequential storyboard - I created this to visualize the "happy path" for the user and map out the end-to-end experience.
Initial lo-fi ideation sketches for the payment screens.
Initial lo-fi ideation sketches for the checkout screens.
Initial lo-fi ideation sketches for the payment screens.
Mid-fidelity wireframes created by Yixuan Zhang.
User Flow 2 - Daniel the Graduate creates a listing and sets availability.
The challenges for this flow was to understand how to set and display availability — as you can see we went through many lo-fidelity iterations before deciding on a final mid-fidelity screen.
The process is broken into three clear steps: create a listing with required media, set campus-based pickup availability, and confirm the sale. By guiding Daniel through structured inputs and saving listing progress, we reduce friction while ensuring posts are informative, discoverable, and reliable for buyers.
Initial lo-fi ideation sketches for the listing and availability screens that I created that we decided against.
Mid-fidelity wireframes created by Yixuan Zhang.
Initial low-fidelity sketches for the user task flow that I created.
Prototype & Test.
user testing.I used a mid-fidelity prototype to conduct the user testing with five participants — three representative users and two industry experts.
Participants were prompted to complete two tasks:
(1) Searching for and purchasing a listing for a textbook.
(2) Creating a listing to sell and item and setting availability.
key Iterations.I synthesized user testing feedback and prioritized usability issues by severity to guide our next design iterations. Based on these insights, we made the following revisions:
Iteration #1: Improving Clarity on the Scheduling Page for Buyers.
Iteration #2: Improving Clarity on the Scheduling Page for Sellers.
These were just the key iterations that we made as a result of our user testing, if you want to check out all of the findings and changes that we made, check out this deck I made detailing our process.
visual design.We aligned our brand values with visual design elements that would resonate with our target demographic of university students, aiming to convey trust, simplicity, and ease of use.
We chose a minimalistic design approach paired with a calming green as our primary color to evoke a sense of safety and reliability, commonly associated with financial security and sustainability.
Neutral tones were used to create a clean, distraction-free interface that allows content—such as product listings—to stand out, while supporting a modern and approachable aesthetic.
Next Steps.
There was only so much that we could include given our project constraints, I think if I had more time these are the next directions that I would be interested in exploring.
further testing & research.Payment.
During testing we recieved feedback that some users may feel apprehensive about paying before they received the actual item. Our band-aid solution was to implement Paypal, however for long-term feasibility it would be important to explore potential policy or design interventions to help users feel more confident.
Managing Meetings.
Another piece of feedback that we recieved during testing was that users were concerned about the potential for mishaps or running late during scheduled meet-ups. At the end of the project I was thinking of potentiall implementing either a notification system or short-term communication feature.
User-Buyer Trust.
Another feature we wanted to implement but did not have the time to was a review system for sellers. I wanted to look into if this was important and/or effective for users or if there was alternative ways to help build up the confidence of buyers and their trust in sellers.
Safer Shopping.
We were not able to implement as many features to address safe shopping for students as we would have liked. In the future I would want to implement a system for students to be able to return/refund poor quality items and also additional verification methods to vet users.
Reflections.
NEXT TIME I WILL...Implement Early Testing.
I wish we had implemented more user testing early on, even when we only had our paper lo-fidelity prototypes. I think if we had received more feedback in the early stages of our designs, we would have been able to address our assumptions and become more nimble with our iterations. This also would have allowed us more time to expand on our solution and also address other important feature changes, additions, and review business considerations for the product.
Bridge Design and Strategy.
Much of the feedback we received from industry mentors centered on the feasibility of implementing the application and how to account for edge cases or unforeseen challenges. Reflecting on this, I realized my focus was heavily on research and design, with less attention given to broader strategic considerations. Moving forward, I see the importance of balancing user needs with business goals and thinking more critically about implementation and stakeholder alignment throughout the process.
i'm proud of learning to...Balancing Two Target User Needs.
It was interesting to work with a product that had a dual value proposition and forced me to consider how to best balance competing user needs without compromising the overall experience. Throughout the process, I was able to better understand how to identify points of tension, priorize shared goals, and make thoughtouful trade-offs to support both user journeys.
Present to Industry Leaders!
Presenting is always something that I have found daunting, but I was responsible for all of the presentations that my group had to conduct. Over the course of the project I developed and presented five seperate cases, three of which were presented to current UX professionals.
At first I had trouble summarizing our work effectively and highlighting the most important parts (I was also extremely nervous). Over time I gained more experience and learned the power of effective storytelling. In the future I will continue to hone and apply these storytelling skills to other projects. Safe to say, I am slowing starting to conquer my fear of public speaking through continued repetition.