An investigation on the Craiglist mobile app to evaluate usability revealed areas that hinder a user’s experience when searching for a grey couch. An online marketplace platform, Craiglist connects people for exchange or sales of goods and services. Simple in definition, but the app has an expansive catalogue and the interface competes with the relevant units of information and diminishes their relative visibility. This need was seen from the main dashboard with the evaluator: Aesthetics and Minimalist Design. Along with that we also applied evaluators: User Control and Freedom and Error Prevention for individual item pages, Recognition Rather than Recall as it applies to scrolling on an item’s page, Flexibility and Efficiency of Use for the “hidden/trash” page and Help and Documentation evaluator for the feedback option/lack of access to help.
To improve the user’s experience, we recommend changes made to the items’ pages taking precedence. This is the core of the app. The trash icon is in a vulnerable position and there is no communication on where it is going and what exactly it is removing as is applies to an item page from the search results. As it can be deleted/hidden in error or a user may want to recover the item, an alert and an undo feature is a priority. We also recommend, with less priority, a sticky nav for the item pages and changing where the “Hidden” page is located, its name and more communication on how to access it to recover the trashed items.
