Alexey Samkov Follow

Special Projects @Deliveroo, ex-Growth & Product @Tradecraft, Strategy & BD across Finance &
Jul 24 11 min read

Carousell: a Guerilla UX Case Study

How incremental design changes can improve the seller
experience to drive listing growth & engagement

When moving apartments in Singapore I tried Carousell, a Southeast

Asian peer-to-peer marketplace similar to Letgo (US) & Mercari
(Japan). I was instantly impressed with the ability to monetize my un-
wanted belongings with speed and simplicity. Every sale felt like I was
getting free money since the other alternatives were 1) letting items
collect dust at home or 2) donating / throwing them away. From then
on, I used Carousell extensively to buy used items for my new flat and
later to sell most of my belongings when I left Singapore (adding
$5000 to my bank account).

Carousells core value proposition is that you can buy and sell your
items in seconds with a few clicks. Whats exciting to me is that this
service is making the used consumer economy more sexy. In turn, it is
activating idle consumer inventory, unlocking new household wealth
and addressing the huge problem of waste that plagues our con-
sumption-driven economy.
As a Product Manager with experience in Product Design and Growth
Im hoping to:

1. Help Carousell users achieve their goal of buying/selling with as

few clicks as possible

2. Improve Carousells core business metrics: # Listings and Time in

App

I believe great customer experience is the core element of growth.

Great UX helps acquire and activate users more easily. It also helps in-
crease user engagement, resulting in higher retention rates. Carousell
seems to think so too.

I set out to improve the customer experience by reducing as much fric-

tion as possible from the buying & selling process on the Carousell iOS
app. This was done through deliberate, incremental changes to the de-
sign that took into account both user and business objectives.

My Process
I really like IDEOs human centered design process as it attempts to bal-
ance feeling, intuition and inspiration with rational and analytical
thought.

Design Process

Throughout the process, Ive also constantly ensured that I was cycling
regularly between divergent and convergent thinking to ensure Im:

1. Keeping my mind open to exploring all possible solutions

2. Keeping check of business objectives and general feasibility

Divergent vs Convergent Thinking Model

I also kept in mind BJ Foggs Behavioral Model which illustrates the im-
pact UX has on changing user behaviour. My objective was to ensure
users could achieve their goal as easily as possible (ability).
 BJ Foggs Behavior Model

1. Empathizing with the User

Provisional Personas

To kick o the process, I created a provisional buyer and seller persona,

meaning they were based on assumptions and online research rather
than actual user research. Some online research showed that that the
majority of users were urban dwellers, aged 25+, have strong pur-
chasing power and are digital natives. This gave me comfort in know-
ing that the user base that I will be testing in San Francisco will be very
similar to that of Carousell in Singapore.

The purpose of this exercise was to create a rough user-led compass, a

North Star if you will, to guide my very early design process.

Guerilla Usability Testing

Using my provisional personas, I conducted guerilla usability testing to

identify pain points in the Carousell iOS app.

Guerilla testing is the art of pouncing on lone people

in cafes and public spaces, [then] quickly filming them
 whilst they use a website for a couple of minutes
uxbooth

I tested the app from the sellers and buyers point of view. Six users
were given a pre-defined scenario split into two parts (sell item and buy
item), and asked to perform the following tasks on an iPhone 7:

Sell items

1. Sell an item (Macbook Air Laptop) on Carousell app

2. Change information of existing listing

3. Find more buyers for your listing

Buy items

1. Find an item you want to buy (used dining table)

2. Save the listing you like

3. Find out more information about listing

4. Buy the item

User Interview Process:

My approach was straightforward. I had several hypotheses of what ele-

ments of the task flow were important for Carousells business. I cre-
ated a script to guide the interviewee to experience the full task flow
from both perspectives. I made sure to only ask non-leading, open
ended questions from a neutral disposition in order to understand the
deeper whys behind their actions and words.

I also asked a few general questions to give me an idea about the users
buying behaviours.
 Behavioral information from interviewees

Updated Personas

I then used the information gathered from the user interviews to up-
date my provisional personas, giving them more weight and validation.

The first is Katie, who is about to move into her new place in San Fran-
cisco. She uses Carousell to buy aordable furniture quickly so that she
can feel at home as soon as possible.

Provisional Persona 1: Katie (Buy-side)

The second provisional persona is John, who is moving apartments for

the second time in 2 years. John wants to sell a lot of his unused things
because hes tired of packing and unpacking stu that he doesnt even
use.
 Provisional Persona 2: John (Sell-side)

2. Defining the Problem

User Research Assimilation

This was the fun part: extracting the key findings from my user inter-
views. I listened to my recordings and put each noteworthy finding into
one of three buckets:

1. What the user said

2. What the user did

3. What the user thought or felt (hypothesized based on non-verbal

cues)
 Categorizing Research Insights

Anity Mapping

Next, I sorted these insights by order of anity, grouping them into

dedicated pain-point buckets.

Affinity Mapping
During the process, I prioritized pain points by frequency, and decided
to focus only on the issues that came up with least 3 of 6 participants,
putting the others on hold for later validation. With a bigger project
scope, I would try and validate the lower frequency pain points in sub-
sequent user interviews.

I still had 8 pain points left, which were still too many to focus on for
the scope of this case study. They were, in order of frequency of
appearance:

Top 8 Pain Points from Usability Testing

2x2 Prioritization Matrix

Next step was to prioritize the above 8 pain points, and for that I used a
2x2 matrix. I plotted the pain points on four quadrants, based on their
importance to a user and to Carousell.
 2x2 Prioritization Matrix: sell & buy side

The prioritization exercise showed that the most important pain points
for both users and Carousell were on the sell-side of the workflow. This
is in line with Carousells own focus on the seller experience.

From here on I decided to focus entirely on the seller persona and the
following associated pain points:

Top 4 Pain Points, Sell Side

USMO

After understanding the key problem area I needed to focus on, I de-
cided to dive deeper into John, the seller persona. The first step was to
use a mostly divergent thinking process called USMO (User, Situation,
Motivation, Outcome) to help me generate user scenarios.
Completing the USMO exercise was a natural segway into creating sev-
eral key Job Stories for John.

Jobs-to-Be-Done

I used Jobs-to-be-Done Framework to explore various situations, associ-

ated motivations and desired outcomes Carousell sellers may be experi-
encing. This culminated into artifacts called Job Stories:

3 Job Stories for John, the Seller Persona

Scenarios

Using Job Stories, I wanted to further embody the holistic user journey
beyond the usage of the Carousell App. I sketched out several scenarios
using story boards which depicted the user journeys in line with the 3
Job Stories synthesized above.
 Story Board Scenarios (my sketching skills have somehow remained stagnant since grade 2)

The above synthesis and production of UX artifacts allowed me to more

deeply embody John as the seller persona.

Ideating and Prototyping

The next part of the process involved diving deep into the pain points,
mapping out the relevant task flows and ideating solutions via paper UI
prototypes. Once I settled on a finalized version, paper prototypes were
converted into Hi-Fi prototypes ready for testing using Sketch and Mar-
velapp.

I kept in mind the core growth metrics for Carousell (# of listings, time
in app), and hypothesized design changes that would have a positive
impact on them. In a follow-up process, I would run tests on these hy-
pothesises using rigorous split testing on the Carousell iOS app.

Now lets dive into the process in detail.

Being able to list an item quickly and easily is critical for both user and
Carousell. From the user interviews there were two points of friction
that stopped a smooth flow towards listing: diculty taking the photo
and choosing the right category.
Pain Point 1: Taking and choosing photos for own
new listing
4 out of 6 users had a frustrating experience taking and choosing pho-
tos for their new listing. Users did not immediately realize that you
could choose multiple photos in the photo library. Some users also ex-
pected the photo they took to show up automatically as the default
photo for the listing. The delayed appearance of a photo in the camera
reel definitely contributed to this frustration.

Task Flow

Task Flow 1: Taking and choosing photo(s) for new listing

Solution: add a feature where photo that had just been taken is auto-
selected in the camera reel, and a highlighted reminder that user can
choose up to 4 photos
Pain Point 2: Choosing the Right Category for
Own Listing
5/6 users exhibited very clear frustration when it came to them choos-
ing the right category for the item they wanted to sell. These findings
are clearly item dependent. In this case, users were asked to sell lap-
tops, phones, watches. Key takeaways were: category list is too long,
there is no clear hierarchy, users cited a wish to search for a category.

Task Flow

Task Flow 2: Choosing Categories for New Listing

Solution: create a new, 2-level categorization mapping based on com-
petitor research, maintaining old Carousell categories

I started out by researching categorisation best practices from the main

e-commerce and classifieds sites/apps. As a result of my findings, I cre-
ated a preliminary 2-level categorisation schema that would holistically
cover most items that would be listed on Carousell. For sub-categories,
I re-allocated Carousells old categories and added new ones to the
Electronics category.

Research findings and recommended schema can be found here.

Caveat: Im conscious that this is a fairly substantial feature revamp
that will carry significant front and back-end technical implications. A
couple of ways I can see this being rolled out:

1. Map all listings to the new categorization schema, using generic

bucket(s) like Other to slot those listings that dont fit the new
schema. This is the approach I used in the above research.
 2. Maintain (aka grandfather) old categorisation schema on existing
listings, while rolling out an entirely new schema for listings. Over
time the old categorisation will naturally be substituted by the
new.

. . .

Pain Point 3: Difficulty editing own listing.

Users were unable to easily locate the edit button, and clicked on price
or item name directly in the listing summary page. Only 2/6 users
found the edit button with ease.

Solution: Change the edit icon to Edit in words to be in line with

other top of screen cues, and enlarged it for visibility.
 . . .

Pain Point 4: Confusion about Promote feature

2/6 users clicked on Promote button in the bottom, and every user was
unclear as to what Promote meant. Upon further questioning, almost
everyone thought this was an internal promotion that Carousell uses,
and assumed it would cost money. Users also expressed lack of dieren-
tiation between the social sharing function and promotion.

As illustrated in the Task Flow (below), there is also a duplication of ac-

tion, with two zones of action leading to the same process.

Task Flow

Task Flow 3: Finding more buyers for own listing

Solution: redesign the Promote feature and Listing View architecture

for clarity, and opened up opportunity for monetization

This was the most challenging pain point to design for. After 2 itera-
tions, I settled on a design that I dont like 100%, but felt it was a solid
step forward with the scope of the project.

My objective here was to:

1. Provide more clarity on what the promote feature is

2. Clean up listing view architecture

3. Open space up for payable promotion features for Carousell to
drive revenue. This is a new priority for Carousell.
In the validation, only 3/6 users clicked on the Promote button. Upon
enquiry, the 3 that didnt click on promote assumed that they would
have to pay to get their item promoted. They did not realize they could
share via social media instead.

If I had more time, I would have tried the following design changes:

1. Highlight on the button that the promotion is free Promote for

Free

2. include a help box the first time the user seeing the Listing View,
e.g.:

You can check out the final prototype here.

. . .

Validation
Key Takeaways
Carousells mission is to monetise consumer assets lying stagnant in our
homes, fuel a second hand economy and help reduce global consumer
waste. In order to do this, Carousell needs to make buying and selling
of goods on the app as easy and frictionless as possible.

This can be done through deliberate, incremental changes to the design

that takes into account both user and business objectives.

. . .

Note: I do not work for, nor am I aliated with, Carousell. I did this UX
case study as I am a product guy who loves to optimise for user experience
and business growth. Carousell is also one of my favourite products: I sold
over $5000 in belongings using this app in Singapore in 2016! This case
study was done in May/June 2017.

Thanks for reading! If you found this useful, please give it a . If

you want to collaborate, talk shop on all things product and
growth, or just want to say hi, ping me at a.samkov@gmail.com or
connect @ Linkedin.

Special props to Zac Halbert, Casper Sermsuksan, Josh Jimenez, Billy

Silva, Taso Kasaris, Ruchi Thukral and Ryan Chadha for helping me out
with this piece!