1/8 Overview
This project encompassed all of the public facing websites for the Curios marketplace. Primarily, the marketplace homepage, browse pages for categories and subcategories, product description page, and purchase flow. It also included the main informational website along with several promotional pages aimed at different types of creators and events.
I worked as the product designer and front end developer, responsible for the overall design and design system as well as design to front end code and responsive versions of all websites.
My Roles
- Lead designer
- Product designer
- Design system
- Front end developer
- React overflow
2/8 Problems
The websites needed to serve two main purposes. First, in the earliest stage of the startup, they needed to appeal to a vision that investors would be excited about. As users grew, the marketplace became the primary focus and needed to be a highly functional, visually appealing experience in finding content. Discovery of content, popular, niche and new, was very important to motivate creators. Growth of creators and projects directly correlated with consumer user growth and overall platform success.
3/8 Users & Constraints
Users were consumers of digital content such as ebooks and music. They needed to quickly be able to identify content categories and especially niches within those categories. Constraints included creating a vibrant, interest catching homepage that let each type of user find the content and genre they were after without overwhelming them.
4/8 Workflow Breakdown
The end user experience included featured content of each type for the appropriate page, always with convenient links to view more of the content or genre in each section. For example, this is how the flow might look for an ebook user looking for a specific niche before choosing a book:
- Homepage
- EBooks
- Sci-Fi EBooks
- Sci-Fi Romance Ebooks
- Individual Product Page
5/8 Screens
6/8 Design System
I created a design system for use on the front facing websites, which was also extended to all dashboard tools.
7/8 Implementation & Collaboration
The implementation was an ongoing process as the experience was iterated and new features and categories were added. I worked on design and once something was ready to move to development, I coded the placeholder versions for desktop and mobile to hand off to the engineers, occasionally adding small features myself when time permitted.
8/8 Outcome
The marketplace grew it's monthly users between +40-60% / month, especially in the ebook category. Several large self published authors joined and vouched for the platform. We went from the early startup stage with only proof of concept, to a growing marketplace with thousands of product listings and praise from users.
Homepage
Tablet
Mobile
