Alana, a mobile marketplace ensuring fraud-free purchasing
Reimagined shopping experience to enhance product authenticity and customer trust.
Role
Design Project Lead
Timeline
January to May 2024
5 Designers, 2 Developers
Team
Tools & Skills
Figma, UXR, Branding, Management
Background
Designing to build customer confidence
Alana is an app combating the rise of bootleg products by allowing users to scan a product's barcode to reveal its true retailer. However, Alana had trouble breaking into the market due to failing to hold the attention and trust of potential customers.
I led four designers to deliver a refreshed Alana that refines the scanning experience and introduce a personalized marketplace that elevates Alana's mission of authentic purchasing.
Research & Findings
Alana didn’t feel trustworthy & lacked purpose for first-time users
Through user interviews and a critique session, we found that Alana struggled with user engagement due to failing to convey the trust that their brand promises. We also decided to look to other apps' with clearer scanning and onboarding experiences.
We concluded that in order for Alana to stand out among other shopping apps, its scanning experience needed strong clarity and its scope of functionalities to expand in a way that emphasizes trust and authenticity.
Goals
Expanding on the mission of fraud-free shopping
I held a whiteboarding session to brainstorm new ideas, resulting in these features that emphasize personalization:
A marketplace tailored to users' lifestyles based on scanning history, encouraging frequent product scanning.
Deeper profile customization through organization and sorting of products.
Change in color branding towards green to evoke authenticity.
Wireframing
Fleshing out new features
Our wireframing made sure to flesh out our ideas by including edge cases, such as users scanning a product not in the database or wanting to edit their scanning history.
Final Designs
Alana Reimagined
Shop for real products, tailored to you
We created a marketplace that only ensures fraud-free products but products that suit your needs.
The new 'For You' page drives engagement through product recommendations based on user activity (saving, liking, scanning a product).
Scan with ease
Scanning barcodes is now more intuitive, with a clearer frame and less obtrusive interface.
If a scanned product hasn't been added to the database, users will now be prompted to add it.
Curate your own experience
Keep track of products of interest you've browsed or scanned.
Users can organize products into collections and review their product history to shape future recommendations.
Reflection
Final Thoughts
Working on Alana taught me to design in a more out-of-the-box approach. Beyond improving the current product scanning, I'm very proud of the solutions my team developed that even the stakeholders felt elevated Alana's mission of trustworthiness!
With our new design, I now see Alana standing out from other retail apps by providing a strong sense of comfort and peace of mind from fraudulent products.
If given more time, I'd have liked to do more extensive iterations on the marketplace through usability testing to inform deeper design choices and adjust for further edge cases.