Vinted
Add a Feature- Vinted Online Marketplace
Role: UX Research, UX Design
Year: 2024
Background
Vinted has rapidly become a popular destination for buying and selling second-hand clothes and accessories, celebrated for its ease of use and growing community of sustainable shoppers.
Recently, I encountered a challenge while helping a friend shop for wedding outfits on Vinted. She shared links and screenshots of potential choices via WhatsApp, asking for my feedback. Before long, our chat was cluttered with a mix of images and links, making it difficult to track my thoughts on each item.
This experience sparked a question: Do other Vinted shoppers face similar challenges when sharing ideas and seeking input from friends? Could there be an opportunity to enhance the platform with a shared shopping space, allowing users to collaborate on purchases, share recommendations, and exchange advice seamlessly?
Goals
The goal of this project was to design an additional feature for an existing website or app, enhancing its functionality and user experience. For Vinted, I sought to address a common challenge among its users—streamlining product-related conversations without relying on third-party apps.
By creating a dedicated, collaborative space within the platform, I aimed to make sharing ideas, recommendations, and clothing suggestions with friends a seamless and enjoyable experience. This feature would empower users to interact directly on Vinted, fostering a sense of community while simplifying the decision-making process.
Problem
Vinted shoppers who want to share a listing with friends—for advice or to suggest items they might like—are forced to rely on third-party apps such as WhatsApp. This workaround often leads to a disjointed experience, with users facing multiple challenges:
Distractions: Switching between apps disrupts the shopping flow and risks disengaging users.
Technical Issues: Links to listings frequently break or fail to load properly in external platforms.
Clutter: Users resort to taking screenshots, leading to a cluttered phone gallery and difficulty organizing feedback.
These frustrations can diminish the overall user experience, leaving shoppers wishing for a more integrated and streamlined way to collaborate with friends directly within the Vinted platform.
Impact
For this project I created a new feature that was validated by other users that solved their key pain points of needing more organisation and simpler methods to collaborate within the platform through my role as a UX designer.
Research
Goals
What are user’s current methods for sharing listings with friends
What is their experience of this sharing process
When in their shopping journey do they most use the app
What frustrations are experienced at any part of their Vinted shopping journey
My aim for the research was to gain a deeper understanding of Vinted shopper’s processes, experiences and frustrations when wanting to share a listings with friends for advice or suggestions.
Methodologies
Comparative and competitive research- to understand the strengths and weakness’ of key players in the global e-commerce industry to see what opportunities might be available
User Interviews- to better understand the experiences of Vinted users around a shared shopping space, what role it plays in their lives and identify existing and potential pain points
Market Trends- Alongside Competitor Analysis- to understand what trends are happening and how the added feature might align with these
Usability Testing - test low fidelity and high fidelity wireframes with users
Competitive Research
I compared the strengths, weaknesses and notable features between with three key Vinted competitors: eBay, Etsy and Depot.
From this research I summarised four key opportunities within the industry:
Mobile commerce - trend is moving towards the use of smartphones with consumers shopping on their mobile devices
Social commerce- social media platforms are key locations for discovering and purchasing products
Personalisation- consumers expect a personalised shopping experience in line with their interests/preferences
Used clothing e-commerce- huge growth market since pandemic and continues to grow
User Research
I interviewed 5 participants who are familiar with Vinted and use it regularly. They have it downloaded to their phones and buy 90% of their clothes from Vinted. A summary of my findings is below:
Research Synopsis
User interviews showed that Vinted shoppers have two key pain points:
The current process to share listings is frustrating
The saved folder/Favourites feels chaotic
Define
User Persona
After working through the user interview notes through infinity mapping, I was able to create two user personas that reflected the user group and their key needs and goals.
Ideation
Feature Prioritisation
After defining what problems would be the most valuable to address for my personas Jen and Ella, I started considering what features they would find most useful and would help them organise their Favourites and collaborate with friends in a quick and easy way so they experience greater delight when on the platform.
User Flows
To understand the steps and decisions Ella and Jen would need to work through I outlined four user flows. These flows helped clarified what screens would be required when creating wireframes.
Ella’s User Objective
“I want to categorise my Favourites by the particular reason I saved them, like ‘winter coats’.”
Jen’s User Objective
“I want to easily share a listing with friends and have the conversation in one place within Vinted.”
Ella wants to create a new ‘Board’ for her children’s clothes and Jen wants to make a new ‘Board’ to keep all her Halloween outfit ideas.
Create New ‘Board’
Now they have created new ‘Boards', Ella and Jen want to save listings to the specific ‘Boards’. Ella wants to save a new pair of kids pyjamas and Jen has found a skeleton onesie she wants to save.
Save to ‘Board’
Jen wants to get her friend’s opinion of whether they think the onesie will suit her and if she should buy it for the Halloween party. Jen wants to add Ella to her newly created ‘Board’.
Add Collaborator
Ella has just received a message that Jen has invited her to collaborate on a ‘Halloween Ideas’ board. Ella is busy with her family but really wants to reply to Jen.
Collaborate on Board
Task Flows
Having identified the broader User Flows I honed in on these to clarify the specific steps needed for individual tasks, as show in the below Task Flows.
Create New ‘Board’
Save to ‘Board’
Add Collaborator
Collaborate on Board
Low-Fi Wireframes
Low Fidelity Wireframes allowed me to carry out early user testing with 5 Vinted users and gain feedback on their expectations to guide where further iterations were required. This round of testing validated that users found the flows easy to navigate with priority iterations including:
Revise ‘Upload Media’ label and icon
Make voting system binary e.g thumbs up/down
Iterate on Notes layout
Add Collaborator Avatars to Board
Add key action prompts
Revise descriptions for ‘Boards’ and ‘Collaborators’ for increased recognition
UI Kit
As this project was to add a feature to an existing product, I worked to replicate Vinted’s existing branding as closely as possible. For the new features I iterated on their styles to bring in several new icons: a Collection icon and voting button.
Prototype and Test
High Fidelity Prototype
Usability Testing
I tested the High Fidelity prototypes with 5 users glean further iteration requirements so as to make the overall feature work as intuitively and pleasantly as possible. Here are my takeaways:
Errors included users choosing different navigation routes to find Collections or favourites.
Users were divided in their opinions on which icon indicated Collections the most
Key Revisions
In response to the usability tests I prioritised the revisions that would have the most impact and increase the ease and satisfaction for my users:
Increase ease and recognition of way finder though which which users can save to ‘Collection’
Fix: Use existing route and known heart/Favourites icon as route to Collections
Existing Collection icon unclear
Fix: revise Collection icon inline with user feedback
Over all thoughts
Key Learnings
This project reinforced the importance of leveraging familiar design patterns and flows to ensure new features feel intuitive and seamlessly integrated into the user experience. Through iterative design, I refined the feature to be simpler and more aligned with user goals, achieving clearer and more efficient pathways for Ella and Jen’s needs.
The result was a feature that users felt they would genuinely use, addressing their initial pain points effectively.
There is also scope to develop the "Collection" feature. Enhancements could include:
Advanced Collaboration: Introducing functionality to tag specific collaborators in comments, enabling more targeted and efficient conversations.
Creative Customisation: Expanding the mood board feature to allow sellers to showcase their unique style or branding, enriching the shopping and selling experience for all on Vinted.
Post Project notes
Since completing this project, I’ve noticed that Instagram has expanded its Save-Collections feature to include the option to invite friends to collaborate—a feature they’ve implemented with a clean and intuitive 2-step process. If I were to revisit this project, this would certainly be a flow I’d study further to inform and refine my designs. From a user perspective, the ease and satisfaction of this process feels like a solid 5/5.
It’s exciting to see that my design thinking aligns with innovations from major platforms, affirming that bringing people together through shared passions and collaborative spaces is not only achievable but also highly valued. Who knows—perhaps Vinted will take steps to develop a similar feature soon!
This realization reinforces my confidence in creating user-centered designs that address genuine needs while staying relevant to industry trends.
