2024 ~ Mobile app design
Hazaar peer-to-peer marketpalce
Role
Lead Product Designer
Team
Product Manager
Full-stack developer
CEO & Founder
Timeline
3 months (part-time)
Skills
UX Design
UI Design
Product Strategy
Brief
Shaping an early-stage marketplace around community
Hazaar is a zero-waste, community-centric marketplace app built to help university students buy and sell preloved items with ease — enabling sustainable consumption, meaningful social connections, and cost-effective shopping. I joined Hazaar at a point where the product had a basic MVP, and my mandate was to revamp the mobile experience to support both immediate user needs and a scalable foundation for future growth.
As Lead Project Designer, I was responsible for shaping the overall digital experience, partnering closely with the product manager and front-end developer, and driving strategic decisions that influenced the product roadmap over a two-year engagement.
Challenge
The MVP didn't full serve the needs of students
When I started, the app’s original MVP validated the idea that students wanted to trade with one another, but it lacked clarity, discoverability, and trust-creating mechanisms. Several gaps surfaced early in the work:
Purchase flows were unclear, leading to user hesitation and abandoned intent
Browse and search experiences lacked structure, reducing discoverability of items and sellers
Brand integration was limited, constraining opportunities for strategic partnerships
The entire experience needed to harmonise community values with usability expectations — while scaling beyond a single university pilot.
These challenges required decisions grounded in strategic prioritisation, not just visual polish.
Discovery
Defining principles to guide decisions under uncertainty and at pace
Rather than reinventing the wheel, I began with deep audit and benchmarking work:
Analysed behavioural data from the existing MVP
Conducted comparative reviews of peer marketplaces like Depop and Vinted
Collected qualitative insights through user conversations and informal feedback loops with early adopters
This process revealed two core truths:
Students loved the idea of peer-to-peer selling — they rejected friction.
The product needed to surface value quickly — too many taps, unclear patterns, and poor search flow were becoming real blockers.
With these insights, I defined a set of strategic priorities that shaped each design choice: simplicity, trust, discoverability, and scalability.
Key projects
Strategic overhaul of browse & discover
Understanding that students often don’t know exactly what they want until they see it, I redesigned the homepage and browse patterns to support both inspiration and precision.
Introduced category structures and curated collections for quicker item discovery
Elevated seller visibility and discoverability to build exposure of small businesses
Pivoted browsing from a TikTok-style feed toward a grid format that emphasised variety at a glance.
Introducing unique QR-based in-person payment
Because Hazaar’s model relies on in-person exchanges to eliminate postage and packaging waste, I led design for a secure, QR-based payment experience. The goal was to:
Evoke a sense of safety and confidence
Maintain a fast transaction flow
Reinforce the community-first nature of the platform
This was a core strategic decision that balanced product feasibility with user trust.
Streamlining core flows
The original app required students to navigate multiple screens and didn't reassure customers that their transactions were done in confidence
Introducing brands whilst maintaining trust
Outcome
Validating core experience through usage and sales generated
Across the first six months of the app’s relaunch and pilot phase at the University of Birmingham:
550+ sales were completed
£2,000+ saved on postage and packaging compared to traditional shipping
2,000+ listings went live on the platform
App Store rating of 4.4★ (as of May 2025)
These outcomes not only validated user demand but also confirmed that strategic UX decisions can meaningfully influence both community adoption and operational success.
Reflection
Learning to lead product decisions under pressure
Working on Hazaar reinforced that strong design leadership goes beyond aesthetics — it’s about crafting systems that respect users, context, and constraints.
Key takeaways include:
Prioritising simplicity can unlock adoption faster than feature expansion
Iterating on real user feedback leads to more confident product decisions
Aligning product experience with business strategy helps scale early traction into long-term viability
Looking ahead, I’ve defined pathways for future growth — including deeper brand-partner integrations and advanced social discovery features that position Hazaar not just as a marketplace, but as a sustainable community hub.
Testimonial
Lilymae has been key in building Hazaar's zero-waste marketplace, transforming business goals into actionable solutions. Her ability to simplify complex ideas fosters collaboration, while her innovation and design leadership have revolutionised our business model, bringing us closer to achieving our mission of making sustainability accessible to 2.8 million UK students.
- Founder & CEO
