Duration
6 months
Team
1 product designer
1 front-end developer
1 product manager
My role
Lead project designer, defining all aspects of the Hazaar digital experience over 2 years as a freelancer
Platform
Mobile app
Design opportunity
The founder, Harriet, identified an opportunity to create a centralised app marketplace to help student communities buy and sell to each other with ease to save money & reduce carbon impact. She saw that students really loved using Facebook Marketplace to sell between eachother, but the experience wasn't intuitive.
And so, Hazaar was born.
Hazaar is based on community and sustainability, with the aim to launch to all universities by the 2025 academic year
I wore many hats during my time at Hazaar. When I joined, they had a very basic mobile app which needed a bit of TLC. My role was to think strategically about how the Hazaar mobile app can be revamped to serve the short-term needs as well be set-up to accommodate for future iterations.
Before getting to the good bit, here's some stats to demonstrate the scale and impact of this work:
550+ sales
at the University of Birmingham pilot within the first 6 months of launch
£2,000+ saved
on postage and packaging (in comparison to posting products using standard 2nd class postage)
2,000+ listings
in the first 6 months of launch (Birmingham pilot)
👚
Rated 4.4 ⭐️
on the app store (as of May 2025)
Key challenges tackled
There was an existing MVP of the app which served as a proof of concept. This helped serve as a starting point to validate what's working and where there were opportunities for improvement.
Some key challenges included:
Streamlining the purchase journey
Reimagining browse to enhance discoverability of products and brands
Improving the search experience to easily find products
Integrating brands to open up new partnership opportunities
Design process
Each challenge faced involved talking to users, collaborating cross functionally and many, many iterations. Since we often needed to work quick and fast, my mindset was always to put the user first and make it as simple as possible.
I looked to inspiration from similar marketplace apps such as Depop and Vinted, whilst keeping in mind Hazaar's unique needs throughout.
A key challenge with this work was the cadence, since I often worked weekends whilst the rest of the team worked during the week, meaning async communication & time-management was crucial in delivering on time and to a high standard.
If you want a deep-dive of my process, let's chat!
Below is a snapshot of some of the core journeys and focus areas that has driven Hazaar to the success it is today. They are still in a phase of evolving their business, but cementing these key journeys has set Hazaar up for success, including demonstrating credibility when pitching for investment.
Each element of the app was carefully designed to align with Hazaar's playful and clean branding. This was my first time applying brand to designs and enjoyed learning about balancing colour, space & shape.
Through speaking to users and small business owners, there was a real need to improve the usability and search mechanism to discover items and sellers.
The previous TikTok-style browse experience wasn't meaningful in helping users discover items. They wanted to see more items at a glance and save items more quickly. Sellers wanted to make their small businesses more discoverable and easily be followed in the app when customers bought from them at in-person events
One core USP of Hazaar is that students meet up on campus to exchange items, so there is no need for postage and packaging. The QR code scanning experience enables users to pay in person securely without needing cash. It was important that this journey was streamlined to evoke trust & security.
Hazaar are constantly evolving their business proposition, and are currently exploring brand partnerships to sell off-price products that would otherwise go to landfill. I defined an approach to split out the brands experience from the P2P marketplace.
The approach similar to FB marketplace was explored, since this is a pattern users are familiar with and enables users to upload multiple products at once. This proof of concept has helped the business to reevaluate how their new business proposition could be translated into an app experience.
As part of Hazaar's next phase, it was important to update the website to reflect their new approach and attract investors.
I built this website in Framer from scratch in 2 weeks.
