Sustainability
Meets Style
Current platforms alienate users with clutter & cliques
Current platforms split donation, resale, and thrifting into separate tools. Discovery is inconsistent, trust is shaky, and interactions feel more like transactions with strangers than exchanges in a community.
Solution
A community-first swap platform grounded in trust
thrēd brings sustainability and style together. By combining thrift discovery, local swaps, and AR try-ons, it gives clothes new life while making secondhand fashion feel inclusive again.
Local-first design that's sustainable
AR try-ons turn browsing into follow through
Bringing back clothing swaps
Building community through shared closets
Why Sustainable Fashion?
For my case study, I wanted a challenge that combined human behavior, community, and design. Sustainable fashion checked all the boxes: a growing movement with clear environmental benefits, but frustrating experiences for the people actually trying to participate.
Role
UX Researcher & Product Designer
Team
Solo
Timeline
4 Weeks
Tools
Figma, FigJam, Fireflies.ai, ChatGPT
Empathize
Thrifters Crave Trust, Not Algorithms
To understand the space, I conducted five in-depth user interviews and a competitive analysis of four major platforms (Depop, ThredUp, Buy Nothing, and Facebook Marketplace). Participants ranged from 20–45 years old, including vintage enthusiasts, casual thrifters, and parents looking for budget-friendly options. Interviews were held remotely over Zoom and recorded with participant consent.
Competitive Analysis Feature Matrix
Affinity mapping helped me move from raw notes to clear themes. By clustering quotes and observations, I could see patterns around trust, sustainability, and frustrations with current tools. What surprised me was how often participants brought swapping as more exciting than resale. A theme I hadn't anticipated, but ended up being a guiding light in this project.
View the full Affinity Map here.
Affinity Mapping Quotes & Insights
Facebook Marketplace worked, but felt transactional & unreliable.
Depop felt like a “cool girl club,” exclusive and intimidating.
Thredup overwhelmed users with endless racks of listings and little community
Facebook Marketplace worked, but felt transactional and unreliable.
Buy Nothing brought generosity, but the lack of structure frustrated people.
Users want clarity, transparency, trust, & the ability to swap.
Across all platforms 80% of participants struggled to trust meet-ups and 4 out of 5 disliked algorithm-driven feeds. People don’t want another resale app. They want clarity, transparency, and a local community they can trust, with the options to exchange clothing, not just buy and sell.
Define
Swapping Should Feel Like Borrowing From a Friend
The define stage acted as a bridge between raw research and a focused problem. By moving from scattered insights to recurring themes, I arrived at a stepping stone that guided the design challenge ahead.
How Might We make swapping feel as natural and inviting as borrowing from a friends closet?
To ground the design challenge in real human needs, I created two personas that reflected the most common motivations and frustrations uncovered in research.
Sage → an expressive thrifter who loves the hunt but hates the hassle
Dana → a pragmatic parent who values sustainability but needs convenience.
Together, Sage and Dana gave me two complementary lenses for evaluating design decisions: One centered on creativity and community, the other on practicality and trust.
View Dana's Persona here.
Persona Card: Sage
At this point, I had to decide which user needs would drive the design. While both Sage and Dana revealed important perspectives, Sage's frustrations and motivations aligned most directly with the opportunity space.
To better understand where her experience broke down, I mapped Sage's user journey. The highs of discovery quickly collapsed into lows when trust and clarity faltered.
Snippet from Sage's User Journey Map
This exercise confirmed that our platform needed to focus on clarity, trust, and community. Not as abstract values, but as concrete fixes for the moments Sages experience fell apart.
View the full Journey Map here.
Where Sage's journey broke down.
Unclear item details created hesitation before committing.
Anxiety about meeting strangers made local exchanges feel risky.
Platforms felt cliquish or chaotic, leaving users unsure if their posts were even seen by others.
Opportunities hidden in the gaps.
Users want their experience with online secondhand fashion to feel safe, clear, and welcoming. Without transparency, and a friendly community vibe, the excitement of finding something new quickly turns into hesitation.
Sage's journey showed me that the issue wasn't just about where people shop, it was about how non-inclusive the experience often felt.
Existing platforms left users with too many questions:
Can I trust this person to follow through?
What will this look like on me?
Is my post going to get lost in the algorithm?
Ideate
Transparency Beats Aesthetics
The research showed that Sage craved clarity, trust, and local connection. While many ideas emerged during ideation, I prioritized three features that directly answers these needs: AR try-on for confidence, swapping as an exchange option, and a detailed product page for transparency. These became the foundation for thrēd’s unique experience.
P1 | Must Have
AR Try-On
Let users preview clothing on their body through AR, giving confidence before deciding to swap or claim.
User Story: As Sage, when I use thrēd, I want to see how clothes look on me with AR so I can feel sure about my choice before committing.
P1 | Must Have
Product Page
Provide a clear item page with details about the product, owner, and location to build trust and safety.
User Story: As Sage, when I use thrēd, I want to view item and owner details along with location so I can trust the swap and feel safe meeting nearby.
P1 | Must Have
Swap Option
Allow users to trade items directly, turning the experience into a friendly exchange rather than a sale.
User Story: As Sage, when I use thrēd, I want the option to swap one of my items when so the interaction feels like sharing instead of buying.
User Flows & Task Flows
To design thrēd's responsive experience, I first mapped the full user flow from browsing items to completing a swap. This helped me see where trust and clarity mattered most. Within that journey, the AR try-on stood out as a key decision point.
Mobile: product page → Intro → scan → preview
Desk Top: product page → QR code → intro (mobile) → scan (mobile) → preview
This ensured the try-on feature felt seamless across platforms, no matter where users started.
AR Scan Task Flows
Wireframing
I began in Figma with quick sketches and low-fidelity wireframes, exploring how users might browse items, try them on virtually, and initiate a swap.
Even at this stage, one theme kept resurfacing: people wanted the experience to feel fun and familiar, but they also needed a little reassurance before agreeing to meet someone in person.
Lo-Fi Wireframe Exploration of the Product Page
A/B Testing
I ran A/B testing with 4 participants using mid-fidelity prototypes in Figma. The goal was to compare two versions of the product detail page and learn which layout best supported in-person swaps. Participant were asked to review an item and decide if they felt comfortable initiating a swap.
Version A: Light, familiar, and social, like a post in a socials feed.
Version B: Detail-first, heavier but more transparent.
Mid-Fi Wireframes for A/B Testing
Users enjoyed the friendliness, but hesitated to commit.
Version A felt familiar and approachable, like a social media post.
Users enjoyed the friendliness, but hesitated to commit without more detail.
4 out of 4 users voted for Version B stating that the detail-first layout built confidence by offering more details about the owner up front.
Friendliness mattered, but clarity was the deciding factor.
Transparency outweighed social familiarity. Users wanted a product page that made swaps feel safe and trustworthy, with enough details to remove uncertainty. Friendliness mattered, but clarity was the deciding factor.
Final Hi-Fi Design of the Product Page
Prototype
Small UI Cues Removed Hesitation
Mid-fi
For the mid-fidelity stage, I made a deliberate choice about scope.
Mobile received the full-swap flow: Browsing a product → AR try-on → Selecting an item from the users closet → Sending the request. Within the limited screen space and higher interaction complexity, it was the most important environment to validate end-to-end.
On desktop, I focused on the AR entry point → transition to mobile and back.
Testing had shown this handoff was a potential l point of confusion, so I prioritized it over building the entire swap flow twice.
In short, I designed what mattered most:
Mobile → Complete swap journey
Desktop → AR handoff to mobile and back
Mid-Fi vs Hi-Fi Desktop QR Code
Useability Testing
I tested the mid-fi prototype with 6 participants over Google Meet, recording each session with Fireflies.AI for notes and analysis. The goal was to observe how users navigated the core flows: browsing a product, trying it on with AR, and sending a swap request, and to uncover friction points that could derail confidence.
Before and After Visual of Iterations
Hesitation stemmed from moments of uncertainty.
Hesitation stemmed from moments of uncertainty, not major flows.
Users were unsure if swap requests actually sent, and wanted a clear way to initiate.
Some participants voiced privacy concerns during the AR scan.
Users wanted a choice to go back to desktop or continue on mobile after the AR scan.
Small signals of clarity made the experience come together.
Trust lives in the details. By smoothing out micro-frictions by adding auto-responses, inserting a privacy policy, and giving the users a choice after the AR can, I turned hesitation into confidence. Small signals of clarity made the experience feel safe, trustworthy, and reliable.
Snippet of Post Scan Desktop vs Mobile Option
Final Prototype
Small refinements built big trust
Mobile
After multiple iterations and usability rounds, thrēd evolved into a responsive web experience centered on clarity, trust, and community.
The mobile prototype delivers the full swap journey — from discovery to AR try-on to sending a swap request — designed for users like Sage who want a low-friction, locally connected way to share style.
Desktop
The desktop prototype focuses on the pivotal AR moment. By scanning a QR code, users can seamlessly continue their experience on mobile, previewing how an item looks before returning to desktop to complete their swap.
Both experiences embody thrēd’s goal: to make sustainable fashion feel personal, intuitive, and fun — without the pressure of traditional resale platforms.
Mobile Prototype
Conclusion & Next Steps
Swap, Sell, Circulate
Building thrēd reinforced how much small details drive trust. Usability testing showed that participants didn’t need flashy features—they needed reassurance at key decision points. Addressing micro-frictions with confirmations, privacy notes, and clear transitions turned hesitation into confidence.
Trust lives in the details. By smoothing out micro-frictions by adding auto-responses, inserting a privacy policy, and giving the users a choice after the AR can, I turned hesitation into confidence. Small signals of clarity made the experience feel safe, trustworthy, and reliable.
Prototype fast, test often.
Research insights → directly shaped AR try-on, swap option, and detailed product page.
Prototyping fast, testing often → uncovered uncertainty early.
Lightweight fixes → delivered outsized impact on user confidence.
The foundation is strong, next I'd…
Explore the owners side of the flow → build and test posting an item.
Expand beyond swapping → explore donation and resale options.
Build transparency features → verify user profiles and item quality checks.
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