New Service Case Study: 2nd Home — Finding Second Homes for Your Used Furniture
NYU Service Design Innovation Class Fall 2023
As a college student in New York City, I’ve been on the move quite a bit. First, there was the big shift from my hometown to multiple dorm rooms, and now I’ve landed in my own apartment.
Whether you’ve lived in a house, dorm, or apartment, I’m sure you’ve witnessed these same sights:
Problem 1: Perfectly good furniture is orphaned and eventually lost to the trash.
It’s unfortunate how often used furniture doesn’t find a second home, especially when there are people out there who would take it. Take Sammy, for example.
User Persona: Sammy
There are tons of college students like Sammy and myself on a college budget. Since our living situations are often temporary, we don’t need expensive furniture to furnish our spaces. However, acquiring affordable used furniture in NYC is a feat in itself.
The Used Furniture NYC Landscape
The common ways people acquire furniture in NYC is from the streets (stooping), thrift store, and more commonly on online platforms such as Facebook Marketplace. One common factor all of these avenues have, however, is the lack of support for transporting used furniture.
User Research (Secondary)
Thinking back to my own experience looking for free used furniture, I recalled my apartment complex’s Facebook Group page. Many residents often took to using this community page as a tool for sharing their soon-to-be dumped used furniture either for free or at a cost.
I realized then that the easiest way to transport furniture in NYC is when it’s nearby to you in the first place. Residents thought this was a quick and convenient way to get rid of their furniture. And boy did their posts gain traction!
We wanted to build off of this informal community-led idea for our new service pitch: “2nd Home.”
2nd Home Mission
We at 2ndHome want to provide a convenient and affordable method for college student to buy, sell, and transport furniture.
App Features
- Choose to be a buyer or a seller
- Discover free furniture offerings from nearby neighbors
- Choose from Pickup or Delivery
- For Pickup, easily identify the nearest push cart station (provided by us) anytime anywhere in NYC!
Final Prototype
We designed a Figma prototype of our 2nd Home app. Feel free to try it out!
The Process
Aligning Our Shared Problems
Our group’s first step towards creating a new service pitch was discovering a problem that aligned with all of our experiences.
We first listed out every relatable problem we could think of in Google Doc and then mind mapped each problem in Mural.co as a sort of thematic analysis. Our problems manifested into 5 themes revolving around NYC:
- Noise pollution
- Shopping
- Affordability
- Transportation
- Accessibility
When it came to choosing a theme, we assessed the feasibility of how much impact we could realistically offer. After discussion, we eventually all found a shared experience with struggling to acquire used furniture.
HMW make it easier for college students to find affordable furniture in NYC?
Brainstorming
We immediately got to brainstorming features for our app and pinpointing the existing services inspiring our ideas.
Gathering Inspiration
We prepared a brief visual representation of our concept for in-class “feedback gallery.”
Conceptualizing
We soon realized, however, that the focus of our app should not be on finding affordable furniture but rather transporting it. And that’s when we pivoted to focusing on transportation.
Sketches
Challenges Faced
Throughout the process, it was really difficult to have a good idea of what our value proposition was. We had too many ideas and lacked focus. We combatted this by relying on the anecdotes from user research of Facebook Groups that we analyzed, pinpointing their problems and frustrations. Staying familiar with the problem helped keep us on track and design for desirability.
Lessons Learned
Validate assumptions before committing to an idea.
My team and I all aligned on our own shared experiences with our problem, however this limited our knowledge to our own assumptions. We should have challenged our assumptions by gathering external insights through user research.
Next Steps
If we were to continue this project, we would get user testing feedback on our prototype by having people try out the prototype and identify challenges with its usability.
Some audience members of this presentation also questioned how we would bring this service to the market in terms of funding. Next we could draft a go-to-market business plan strategy for potential ways we could partner with delivery services and gain funding from the NYC Department of Waste on an initiative to reduce furniture waste.
