Depop is a global e-commerce app that aims to make fashion more inclusive and less wasteful through buying and reselling clothes. However, the app design can seem cluttered and disorganized when users are saving items, searching for clothes, and making offers.
Throughout this project my goal is to redesign the existing Depop interface to give more control to the user when saving and searching for items they like as well as make the selling process quicker and easier for sellers.
How might we foster a stronger client and retailer community by improving upon the existing Depop user interface?
With over 140,000 new listings every day, Depop has become one of the largest second-hand selling platforms. A subsidiary of Etsy, Depop aims to create a fashion ecosystem that is kinder to the planet while building a more diverse home for fashion. However, the poor designs of specific features have caused frustration for many users. With over 30 million users it is difficult to sift through large amounts of items and users feel overwhelmed by the amount of choices available. At the same time, many complain of scam-like sellers and items being listed as ISO’s (In Search Of) where users post items they are looking for rather than selling.
To better understand what people find to be the most frustrating part of their Depop experience, I sent out a survey and gathered data over a two week period. Survey statistics showed that the majority (88%) of users are female identifying with the age range being around 18-32. After interviewing 5 people to get a more in depth account of their experience, I gathered the following quotes:
Through this I was able to narrow down common problems people experience while using Depop so that I can better curate my designs to solve such issues.
The offer process allows for users to bid an item for a lower price, however the current depop design does not have a feature to see other offers. This makes it frustrating for users who want an item to miss it due to them making a lower offer than other users.
The new design displays the top three highest bids to the buyer. I decided to keep the accounts that made such offers to be anonymous to not deter anyone from making an offer.
Depop has a save feature that allows buyers to save items they are interested in for later. The current design (right) however, does not give users the ability to organize such saved items. This makes the saved feature feel cluttered and unorganized.
Depop also acts as a social platform, giving users the ability to follow other users. Due to this I decided to add controls such as sharing the board or making it private/public to make it more collaborative.
The original Depop home page (left) is rich in recommendations and various categories to search from. However, based on my user research, many users report finding it to be overwhelming. The New home page design (right) focuses on separating the home page into categories to guide the user in searching for an item.
Depop includes categories such as “Suggested For You”, “$20 and Under”, “Recommended Sellers” and many more that users can explore. Instead of scrolling down to reach these different categories, I decided to split them up into pages while still keeping a similar design style.
Finally, users reported feeling that the recommendations would stay the same throughout the entire day, making it difficult to find new items. To address this, I added a refresh feature that gives users a new set of items they might like.
I conducted user testing with 4 of my close friends who have been using Depop to shop for many fashion items as well as for selling their own clothes. Through moderated in-person user testing, I instructed each of them to complete a task and kept track of any difficulties they may have experienced.
Here are some key notes from the testing:
