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Since childhood, I’ve had a keen interest in toy exchange – I always saw it as the start of a new friendship. Nowadays, my hobby has shifted to exchanging second-hand clothes, but the sentiment remains. This story is particularly relevant to my 12-year-old niece, an only child living in a big and often lonely city, who has amassed a large collection of toys. The issue of toy waste is critical to the wider community in Beijing, where an alarming 63% of toys are discarded annually. In just one district alone, 540 families are grappling with this problem.
Solution
How can we simplify the toy exchange process for parents compared with large-scale shopping like Taobao, or eBay? How can the process of getting a toy be easy, community-based, and trustworthy?
Research Goal
To identify my target users or app champions, I began by using a questionnaire. After sifting through 500 responses, I focused on those with a positive attitude and discovered that most were parents who expressed a strong desire to exchange toys.
User Interview Insights
I select 6 parents and 1 toy collector as my app champions.
Overall :
I learned more details from them about these toy exchangers, including their eco-friendly nature and a strong sense of community. In fact, they engage in various ways of exchanging toys and other second-hand items.
Popular Topics recommendation: including sustainable tips and restoring the toys
Order status: to check out the status of the toy, meantime encourage the User to interact with the community.
Learnings & Challenges
I find that the process of building trust such as communication, community credit, etc. – is better “over-designed” than undesigned. For the user, this indicates that we pay attention to subtle needs.
An old fashion card sorting can help me quickly get the sorting method from the user.
