I started this personal project during my free time thinking . What if Craigslist had a redesign. They have proven already that they can become a successful company without an appealing website. But the question still stands… What if? 🤔 🤔. My goal is to make Craigslist a better user experience as I believe the website is not as popular as it use to be.
CraigsList was launched in 1995 which is 24 years from now. Since then they have kept the same design for the website. As a result it has become really difficult for most users including myself to navigate Craigslist. Comparing the old internet browsing against today, there is a huge difference in terms of how people browse and use internet in the 21st centuries.
I have a few ideas I wanted to cover that will help improve the website
- First thing I want to do is change the User interface. This will attract more users to the site.
- Give some spacing on the information as the current website has to much information crammed together.
- Making it easier for users to navigate the site without any confusion.
For every project, there are always different ways to structure your design process. In this case I would need to understand the problem and figure out ways to solve it. Next step is to do my research on their competitors. How well are they performing in the market and how we can make our product better by adding additional features that our competitors do not have. User research is also important, I would normally interview active users or users that have tried the product before. By doing this It can help UX designers better understand what works and what does not work.
By drawing a user map or user journey it can be very helpful to figure out how the users use the product.
I would normally use a pen and paper to brainstorm all the ideas that I have gathered from researching and coming up with multiple solutions for the problems. Then I go to Adobe XD and create a wireframe on how the structure would look like.
If I am collaborating with other developers, designers or product managers, I would normally show them the wireframe of the product and get feedback from them and keep updating them until everyone is satisfied. But since this isnt a group project I am happy to say that I am pleased with the wireframe and I can move on with the designs
For Design I usually use Adobe XD as my design tool. However I am able to use any tools that is given to me as I have already used them before. Adobe XD stood out the most in my opinion because it works really well with both prototyping and designing.
First page is the homepage of CraigsList. Second page is the car+truck section when a user click to view a particular car they would like to purchase. Third page is the house for sale section where users can list their property on CraigsList.
Below I am comparing both the old design and my new design:
On the “For sale” page, I simplified everything with common used fields and got rid of the less used fields when searching for a home. By having simple fields allow users to navigate quickly and also there is no guessing involved when clicking on something.
Another common problem I see on old websites is that most users do not use the sidebar very often. So I moved the side bars to the middle so users can notice. I also thought about a similar design to airbnb or Zillow a very popular real estate database where they take advantage of their dropdowns.
- I believe the new design will start to build more traffic on the site and also bring back old users that left due to the old design
- “A confused mind always says no” I made it easier for users to navigate and find whatever that interests them on the site.
- I believe the reading experience is better than the current as the everything is not clustered together and having some breathing room between each section.
This was a very interesting project to tackle as there are many things I can find to improve on the website. Prototyping and User testing is a key component that I did not mention in this project . This will help UX designers figure out how users interact with the website. For example are they using the site more on the desktop or on their mobile phone. Once we feel like we have enough information, we can either convert some designs into code and send it out to the engineer team to build the application or just send the designs instead and let them do the work. I prefer converting it into code since I have experience in HTML, CSS, and Javascript.
Please leave some feedback and comment and let me know what you guys think about the case study.
