Problem Statement 🤔

When looking for different ways to promote local events and small businesses in my neighbourhood, I found that the current options are difficult to obtain, manage, keep track of, and overall extremely outdated. Those looking to promote their businesses want a simpler and more accessible way to track their signs and payments while home owners are constantly seeking side hustles to increase their income.

A market place which allows businesses to connect with home owners willing to put up advertisements on their lawn for affordable prices. Sellers are able to make income and connect with businesses in their area. Buyers are able to purchase affordable advertisement spaces in their preferred neighborhoods and are able to easily track and manage their signs.

As a seller…

List Your Home

• Add listings of properties that you own

• Connect with small businesses in your area

• Accept or decline orders

• Send back signs using the pre-paid label after the advertisement duration ends

I began with research to understand why buyers (small businesses) would choose yard signs over other forms of advertising and found a statistic which really drove this project:

"Research has shown that around 85% of your customers live or work within a 5-mile radius of your business".

-International Signs Association

Small businesses, especially in the home maintenance services and local events categories would not benefit from social media advertisements as it would not effectively reach their target audience and because of how expensive it can get. When doing a scope through the internet, I was shocked to see that although multiple platforms exist to help with specific stages of the outdoor advertising process such as keeping track of signs or getting signs put up, there is a lack of a platform that takes care of the entire process and tracks all advertisement information in one place for businesses to access.

After looking at the current solutions, I found 2 that were most relevant and decided to do further research.

1.Curbex

"We signed the contract on October 11th, 2019. She told us that our sign could go up on November 20th, 2019. Then she sent another email clarifying that it would be October 20th, 2019. Then she sent another email again clarifying that November 20th, 2019 would be the actual date. Then, a few weeks later, she told us we would have to wait until December 11th to get our signage up, and run the campaign through a time-period where we will be closed for the Christmas holidays, which is useless to us. They shouldn't be confirming dates with clients until they have actual confirmation. When we sent a download-link for them to receive our artwork, they didn't even download them until weeks later, because we reminded them that the download-link was about to expire. We're not really impressed with the service, and we wouldn't recommend them to other businesses. However, we're still open to them rectifying the situation.”

- Ryan k.

What Curbex Lacks?

The main issue with Curbex seems to be the lack of communication and inefficient updates through email. This made it clear that the platform must have a feature that allows users to view stats and to be notified about updates with their signs and bookings as well as a messaging feature to ensure proper communication from both sellers and buyers, preventing any misunderstandings and frustration.

Understanding The Problem for Sellers

I conducted interviews with 5 individuals and asked several questions to understand their experiences with selling on marketplaces.

I reached out to a few different sellers from varying marketplaces such as Airbnb, Depop, and Etsy to gain insight on what challenges and problems they currently face on these apps and how their experience as a seller can be improved.

Some of the questions I asked:

1.How long have you been a seller on this platform?

2.What are the difficulties of selling on this platform?

3.What does this platform do exceptionally well?

4.What would you like to be seen improved?

5.Do certain situations as a seller frustrate you?

Insight on Buyers

Everyone I interviewed explained a lack of communication and frustration around the shipping process. This was a result of many factors such as slow updates and hassles with printing and keeping track of shipping labels. I realized that sellers are seeking organized information and transparency to ensure that they can get orders completed successfully without feeling overwhelmed.

These interviews were critical to understand pain points and important features needed to create a positive user experience while also ensuring practical functionality. This allowed me to create a journey map to better understand how to design this platform.

Journey Map for Buyers…

Main Insights

1.Buyers want one platform that handles all needs instead of sourcing multiple tools

Sketches of different sections of the app

Wireframes - Early concepts

Some of the questions I asked:

1.How are you currently advertising?

2.What are some struggles of social media advertisements?

3.What are some struggles of yard advertisements ?

4.What would you like to be improved from your current way of finding and purchasing advertisement?

When looking into different ways to create this platform, the two main choices were a web and mobile application. I decided to go with a mobile application because web applications lack important features that apps offer such as fast load times, notifications, data retrieval, quick reach, and since mobile users spend 88% of their time on mobile apps and just 12% of the time on mobile websites (emarketer.com), it was clear that mobile applications was a better choice as it would generate more revenue and be more valuable to users.

I began sketching out the UI for this platform. I started off by sketching main sections of the app and looked towards several different marketplaces for inspiration. After sketching out the basic design for important components of the app, I created wireframes.