Craigslist Redesign


Redesigning the process of buying and selling on Craigslist New York. 


Craigslist is a website that enables users to post and find listings across a wide range of categories such as items for sale, jobs, and services. The platform is simplistic, has local focus, and is free to use, making it an accessible resource for transactions and connections.

The Ask


While Craigslist has been a popularly used platform, its design isn’t its strongest suit. It’s time for a redesign!

The Goal


Redesign Craigslist to improve the experience of finding a product/service and enhance the brand.

Responsibilities


  • Product Designer
  • UX Researcher & Designer
  • UI & IxD Designer
  • Brand Designer & Strategist

Tools


  • Figma
  • Adobe Illustrator
  • Adobe After Effects
  • Adobe Photoshop
  • Adobe Lightroom

UX Audit


Craigslist is a great example of a platform whose UX is very closely connected to its UI and graphic design, leading to a less than optimal consumption of the product. It was crucial to explore the existing product to figure out,
  • Where are users getting stuck?
  • Where are they dropping off?
  • Why are they dropping off?
  • What do they not understand?
Stakeholder Interview

Craig Newmark started Craigslist because people were paying too much for ineffective ads, and he wanted to provide a simple platform where people would pay less for more effective ads.

People didn’t want fancy things, they wanted simple, direct and fast. Although he thoughts that he didn’t understand the value of media and communications, identity and brand, Craigslist’s undesigned style of the early Web because it’s brand.
User Interviews

Once I had an idea of how Craigslist worked currently, I started talking to the different types of users about their interaction with the website and why they did or did not use it, and summarized it as the following:
  • Craigslist has an iconic brand identity
  • There is an appeal in its simplicity
  • Listings seem more authentic than other e-commerce platforms
  • It feels like Reddit with different content
  • It has multiple different apps in one

Usability Heuristic Evaluation

Reasons to Conduct a Redesign


The site looks outdated
New branding needs to be implemented
Technological advances have made the site seem antiquated
The site isn’t optimized for mobile or social media
The information architecture of the site is a mess and many links are broken
The user experience is confusing and there is no unified structure
Analytics show users have trouble doing what they need and don’t stick around

Competitor Analysis 


The next step was to look at similar apps and study them in the same manner as Craigslist to understand where the gaps are and:
  1. What’s working?
  2. What’s not working?
  3. What are the opportunity areas?


    Insights 


    • Craigslist has a very specific audience that use it for its authenticity.
    • Products on e-commerce platforms seem targeted and curated.
    • It feels like they are pressurizing a user to buy something.
    • The seller also has more autonomy.

      How might we make the website easier to navigate while keeping the same aesthetic and values of the original product? What if we redesign the interface of the existing website, making it less clustered, more readable and easier to navigate?

      Affinity Mapping


      I synthesized my research by clustering my notes into groups. 

        User Persona 


        Empathy Mapping


        The empathy map for Jenn was where I touched based during the process. 

          User Journey



            The old user journey was an overarching and simplified version of the process of buying. With the persona and empathy map in mind, I created a new user journey with more steps, keeping in mind Jenn’s possible doubts.

            Information Architecture  


            For this part of the platform, this is what the information architecture would look like: