Craigslist Redesign
Redesigning the process of buying and selling on Craigslist New York.
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?
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.
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
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:
- What’s working?
-
What’s not working?
- 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.