Poshmark: UX Case Study
An exercise to discover and solve pain points in the Poshmark mobile application
Objective
To explore the human-centered design process through evaluating the usability of apps.
I chose to do a case study on Poshmark because I believe they are a great online choice to shop pre-owned quality clothing items. I am just looking a way to challenge myself.
Outcome
For Poshmark, this redesign would mean an increase of new user engagement and retention and possibly an increase in revenue per sale.
Process
To discover pain points in the design, I chose guerrilla usability testing to see where in the selling and buying process on the Poshmark app are users struggling.
After affinity mapping the pain points, I focused my efforts in creating solutions for the pain points that had high business needs and user needs.
My solutions were successfully validated by testing five users with my solutions. All my solutions were successful!
Design Decisions:
User Research
In order to gain insight into the app, I interviewed and tested seven people. I asked each participant to complete a series of tasks while verbalizing their thoughts.
I specifically chose these tasks to understand the user’s selling and buying processes and to validate some of the pain points I observed from testing the app myself. I translated each task into a realistic scenario to help engage the user.
Prioritization of Pain Points
While creating the affinity map, I noticed I had a quiet a few pain points. Based on the prioritization matrix , I focused on three pain points based on user and business priorities.
Primary Focuses
The three pain points were the pain points I focused on.
Pain Point 1: Users used Bundles as a way to save their items for later and did not understand the intended purpose.
Pain Point 2: User used the Liking button as a way to curate their feed and not a save posts.
Pain Point 3: Users could not find items they were selling or saved.
Validation
In order to validate my solutions, I tested five people with a prototype of my design changes.
Results
Task 1:
Original Design: 1/7 users used the Like Button to save a Poshmark post. Alot of the users used Bundles, a feature where if you buy more than one item from the same seller then receive discounts. Users assumed the Like Button was a way to tell the algrothm to show more clothing items like the ones the user is seeing in front of them.
Redesigned Design: 5/5 users used the Bookmark Button to save a Poshmark post. This visual change supported the user’s mental model.
Task 2:
Original Design: 0/5 users went My Closet from the Setting page to see their items they are selling. Users assumed My Sales was the page the items they are selling would be placed.
Redesigned Design: 5/5 users went to My Sales from the Setting page to find the clothes they were selling.
TAKEAWAYS
From this case study, I learned the importance of small tweaks in designs create the biggest impact. Based on my testing and validating, users completed tasks quicker and felt successful in their abilities to navigate the mobile application.
