phaseI

Phase I: Analyzing Users, Competitors, and Initial Designs

Introduction

Skill Swap is an application that allows for users to be able to pick up new skills or polish their skills by exchanging instruction with peers, while also leaving room for people to seek help with repairs and other laborious tasks. Methods

During our research we were able to use a handful of research methods that allowed us to get a better idea of how we wanted to format our application and what would and would not benefit us. By looking at other competitors, we found strengths and weaknesses of each of their platforms that we can exploit to make our app more appealing. Some apps, for example, hide their content behind a paywall, while other platforms we found were made with poor quality or without much thought put into the user interface. To put it simply, they were not optimized for this niche.

We also ended up utilizing personas and scenarios. Doing this allowed us to put ourselves into different perspectives, and to see the world in ways that are usually foreign to us and further optimize for many possible use cases. We ended up creating 4 different personas with their own scenarios with some wanting to just exchange skills or others just needing a part so they are willing to teach someone a new skill.

Findings

One of the largest things we found was that the target audience of Skill Swap would be young adults who have just been set into the adult world, and would be seeking life skills that would stay with them forever. The idea of exchanging skills for other skills is valuable, especially if these young adults are also college students. Each skill learned could save them money that could be used towards their education, or even help them in their education. We also did a heuristic evaluation on our biggest in-space competitor, “Facebook Marketplace". Although the website does a lot of things right in the peer to peer marketplace category, there are also some things that definitely bring it down as a skill exchange platform. When it came to flexibility, efficiency of use and helping users with errors we gave it a 5 out of 10. Facebook's UI leaves all the filter options displayed at all times, which could be intimidating for novices and annoying for veterans who despise visual clutter or are prone to mistaken clicks. Furthermore, when we did encounter an error they were pretty vague on what steps were needed to take to fix the error that occurred which could leave users frustrated since it doesn’t help in any real way unless you have previous experience with the error.

Personas and scenarios gave us a lot of feedback actually from understanding different perspectives but also showing us that some users might not want to exchange for a currently offered skill; we may need to look into having some kind of credit system. Through this system, it would become possible for users who are interested in learning a skill from someone who does not have some sort of talent they require to still engage in an exchange by earning and spending credits. For example, a user could teach one person to gain credits, then use those credits later to learn a completely different skill from someone else. This would make the platform more flexible and inclusive, encouraging continuous participation and balancing situations where direct one-to-one trades aren’t possible.

Conclusions

One of the main takeaways from our findings was that keeping SkillSwap straightforward and easy to navigate would help users stay engaged and feel confident using it. A simple design makes the platform welcoming for newcomers who might otherwise feel intimidated, while also allowing returning users to quickly get to what they need without unnecessary steps. Even though our primary focus is on young adults, the interface remains accessible for older users and teenagers who may also benefit from learning or sharing skills. Another idea that came up after creating our wireframes was to add a tagging system for skills and posts, making it quicker and easier for users to find exactly what they’re looking for.

Caveats

We unfortunately have no user data from actual users since we are still developing the actual application where everything will happen.