Goals
The goal was to design a platform that encourages people to barter within their communities while feeling comfortable and secure. We set out to create intuitive tools for discovering nearby items, posting or requesting trades, and communicating with others. Another aim was to structure the experience around interest-based groups to make finding relevant items easier and reduce clutter.
Challenges
A major challenge was deciding what not to include in the MVP. We initially explored creating a full social media experience and a structured bartering process. Both approaches risked making the platform feel heavy and restrictive.
Outcomes
By paring back features, we focused on two essentials: enabling simple communication between users and making it easy to find nearby items or services. With few existing models to reference, we chose to build a lightweight app that could be tested and iterated on, rather than over-engineering assumptions about how people would actually use the platform.
Research & Findings
Our research focused on understanding how existing marketplaces operate, with Facebook Marketplace serving as a primary reference. We found that user-controlled marketplaces succeed when items are easy to categorize and discover. Since BarterBug involves no monetary transactions, we also explored how the absence of currency would shape user behavior and the overall trading experience.
Our Approach
We wanted to ensure that the experience could be seen to some extent to encourage users to sign up. Once they got the app, they would immediately be shown things nearby.
We explored opportunities during onboarding that would ensure users could immediately see things relevant to their interests once they got started
To introduce users to the way things worked, we wanted to provide the opportunity to post something to barter immediatey, This was to introduce them to a core feature, as well as get them involved in the community. A secondary benefit would be that we can start showing items that would be relevant to their interests, depending on what they choose to barter.
Design
The home screen enables easy discovery of nearby items and services, allowing quick bartering. This collaborative platform thrives on seamless contributions and consumption.
In the initial version, we aimed to give users control over their bartering experience to better understand their platform usage. We introduced a straightforward chat interface that allows users to share posts, media, and any relevant information to facilitate their bartering.
Groups are a vital feature that enables users to create communities based on shared interests and geographical proximity. This fosters easier access to niche needs and connections through common exchanges, events, and services.
Profiles allow users to see and validate whether they want to barter with a person. Verification provides users a star to show that they are a real user, and provides a sense of trust and accountability.
Users can post a barter in just three simple steps, with clear categorization options to help others find these barters easily.
