3 Months
UX Designer • UX Researcher
Academic Class: Interaction Design
Background
Pass It Forward (PIF) is a mobile app designed to strengthen local communities by making it easy for people to give, receive, and share freely. We’ve designed the experience to be both fun and safe, with a bright visual style and built-in features that promote trust during local meetups. By encouraging mindful giving and real-life interactions, the app helps turn neighborhoods into connected, generous communities.
Where Obstacles Become Openings
As waste levels rise, people seek sustainable ways to live. Traditional buy-nothing groups foster community but are often cluttered, disorganized, and lack safety features, making exchanges inefficient and insecure. Pass it Forward addresses these challenges by offering a structured, community-based platform with built-in verification and safety measures, positioning itself as a trusted solution for local, sustainable giving.
Seamless account creation and identity verification process
I designed the account creation and identity verification flow to be simple and transparent. Users join by selecting their neighborhood, then verify with a selfie, ID confirmation, and address check—ensuring real people are using the app.
Find and request an item from your neighbor in minutes
Pass It Forward prides itself on being a structured, community-driven app that makes it easy for users to find and request items. With features like filtering, search, item inquiries, and streamlined requests, the experience is both intuitive and efficient.
Arrange a pickup time and location
Arranging a pickup is a seamless in-app experience that protects users’ privacy, with no need to share personal information. Just enter your available dates and times, and the system will handle the rest to coordinate a convenient meetup.
List an item
Users can easily create a post to list an item they'd like to give away, all without revealing any personal information, making sharing within the community quick and effortless.
Explore the Profile Page
A user’s profile page will serve as the ultimate way to build trust between users. With features like user reviews and an award system, individuals can gain a sense of who they’re connecting with, fostering confidence and transparency.
Research
To find the best way to position Pass It Forward, we started by diving into user and competitive research. Along the way, we uncovered key opportunities that shaped and inspired the direction of our design decisions.
Step 1: Competitive Analysis
Through our competitive research, we found that many existing platforms were unstructured or transactional. We saw an opportunity to create something different: Pass It Forward, a structured community-based app focused on giving, where people share what they no longer need and find new homes for items, all without buying or selling. Our aim was to build a space rooted in trust and connection.
Step 2: User Interviews
To dive deeper, we spoke with individuals who had experience giving away, buying, selling, and exchanging secondhand items. Through them, we learned what made these moments meaningful, where frustrations often surfaced, and how the overall experience could be improved. Their insights gave us a clearer view of what a more thoughtful and community-driven platform could look like. Some of our key learnings included…
✨ Safety and reliability are top priorities for individuals engaging in secondhand transactions
✨Users were concerned about scams and dishonest transactions
✨ Item quality heavily influences behavior. Users won’t pursue something unless they think it’s worth the effort.
Meet Taylor
To better understand our users, we created a detailed persona, Taylor, and mapped out her journey to visualize her experiences, pain points, and needs throughout the process of giving and receiving items.
The First Iteration
Guided by our research, we began sketching the first version of Pass It Forward. I focused on designing the onboarding and verification flow, a crucial step that would set the tone for the entire app experience.
Iteration Timeline
Our design went through multiple rounds of refinement. First, through group critique sessions to help each member improve and align designs with each other. Second, we conducted usability testing to gain insights, thoughts, and feelings from potential real-life users.
Key Testing Insights
The nuances of identity verification:
→ Users generally felt identity verification would make the PIF environment more friendly and safe
→ The onboarding process takes time for users, so making it fast, straightforward, and transparent will help build trust and reduce frustration
The overall PIF experience:
→ Providing proper feedback was essential in increasing user confidence when requesting an item
→ Fewer steps creates a better experience. Too many steps are taxing for users, so streamlining processes, especially for creating or setting pickup details, improves usability.
Post-Test Redesigns
→ Sign-up screen - added a tool tip for users unsure about providing their age. This is a required step in PIF to ensure all users are 18 and older. This gave clarity and reassurance to the user.
→ Set Neighborhood - made address input into a searchable field with a 20-mile adjustable radius to encourage local participation, and updated neighborhood info for clarity and real-world accuracy.
→ Verification - Allowed users to upload photos from their camera roll to enhance speed. Step 3: Address Verification now clearly explains how to reuse a photo ID, and a Privacy Policy indicator reassures users that their information is protected.
→ FAQ - added to address concerns related to the verification process for specific use cases and put users at ease.
→ Verified! - updated the perceived verification length to match user expectations
Final Takeaways
✨ Great collaboration starts with healthy communication: it's the foundation of any strong, successful team dynamic.
✨ Strong organization was essential, especially with overlapping features. That required us to stay aligned and make cohesive design decisions together.
✨ User feedback revealed that what felt intuitive to us wasn’t always clear to others, highlighting the importance of designing with, not just for, our users.