UX Research | Product Design
Graduate Capstone — MICA
CampusSwap is a mobile marketplace concept designed to help college students safely and conveniently buy and sell secondhand items within their campus communities.
I developed the project through an end-to-end human-centered design process, moving from exploratory research and problem definition through prototyping and iterative usability testing.
College students frequently need affordable furniture, textbooks, electronics, and other essentials, while graduating or relocating students often need a convenient way to sell items they no longer need.
Existing online marketplaces can connect buyers and sellers, but they aren't designed specifically around the needs of a campus community.
How might I create a safer, more convenient marketplace experience specifically for college students buying and selling within their campus communities?
I began by researching how college students currently buy and sell secondhand items and the challenges they experience throughout the process.
Research insights were synthesized into personas and a customer journey map, helping me identify recurring needs and pain points across the buying and selling experience.
Trust & Safety
Students needed greater confidence in who they were interacting with.
Convenience
Buying, selling, and exchanging items needed to fit naturally into campus life.
Affordability
Students wanted easier access to useful secondhand items within their budgets.
Community
Limiting interactions to a campus community could make exchanges feel more relevant and manageable.
Research findings informed the structure and core features of CampusSwap.
The experience was designed around a campus-specific marketplace where students could discover items, create listings, communicate with other students, and coordinate exchanges within their university community.
I translated these requirements into user flows and wireframes before developing an interactive prototype for testing.
Rather than waiting until the design was complete to evaluate the experience, I used an iterative testing approach to identify and address usability issues throughout the design process.
I conducted three rounds of RITE usability testing, making changes to the prototype between rounds as issues emerged.
Testing helped refine navigation, interactions, terminology, and the overall marketplace experience while demonstrating how relatively small design decisions could significantly affect usability.
The final CampusSwap concept brings the research and testing together into a campus-centered marketplace experience designed around trust, convenience, affordability, and community.
CampusSwap gave me the opportunity to take a product from an initial problem through research, design, prototyping, and multiple rounds of usability testing.
The project reinforced the value of testing early and iterating frequently. Some of the most meaningful improvements emerged not from large redesigns, but from observing where users hesitated, misunderstood an interaction, or expected the experience to behave differently.
More importantly, the project helped establish the research-driven design process that I later brought into professional UX environments.
