Overview

Bizaar is a peer-to-peer marketplace that connects users with Instructors in their area. It is a marketplace where skills, talents, expertise and craft of all creed and kind, are not just part of an exchange between customer and provider, but something to be celebrated and shared in a well-lit online community.

Click here to jump to the prototype and mockup!

Main Objectives

Creating a brand and look that encourages discovery

To differentiate it from other online learning communities, ( e.g. Udemy, Linda, KhanAcademy) Bizaar's look, feel, language and approach needs to facilitate hosting a rich, diverse and most of all, unique collection of talents.

Creating a easy-to-use multi-booking system that allows users to both purchase and book multiple lessons.

Most marketplaces, like Airbnb and Uber, are meant for one-time purchases. Although we want to allow that as well, Bizaar also needs to allow hosting a long-term relationship between users and Instructors.

Initial Research

Directed one-on-one interviews

I interviewed both potential Instructors and users on their thoughts on the process of looking for/hosting classes locally. I tried to focus the direction of the interview on the stated objectives.

Competitor Analysis

I looked into branding and the discovery and booking processes for Airbnb Experiences, Classpass, Craigslist and Udemy.

Project Insights

Consensus among the users was that it's easy to find local classes online - but finding a class to specifically fit their schedule, price range, location (among other factors) is a difficult and time consuming process. This is due to the 2 main factors: classes were on different platforms, or their own websites, and users would have to hop between tabs to compare classes, and the booking processes weren't consistent, or lacked all the data they needed to make a concrete decision.

I found out from both the users and the Instructors that people were more likely to buy package deals, rather than single classes- unless the single class was free. Instructors said they preferred to sell package deals, as their customers were more likely to stay after.

Airbnb Experiences and Classpass had the most understandable Discovery Phase, Product Page and smooth Booking Processes, because they treated the process like one would treat a client. The experiences were very acutely aware of A) what their providers need to communicate B) what their users/buyers look for, and are extremely successful of providing an information hierarchy based on their wealth of user knowledge.

When discussing Airbnb Experiences (or Airbnb in general), Classpass and Udemy, users expressed that they felt "warm" and "welcome", whereas with, for example. Craigslist, they were offput by a lack of a presence of anyone but other users- which is more ideal for a "forum" type of website.

IDEATION: Branding

We ended up with a Brand Personality that encapsulated Growth via community and Transparency, acceptance and celebration of diverse skills and talents.

Key Descriptors

Welcoming, thoughtful, exciting, diverse

Brand Personality

Bizaar is a woman in her late 20s to early 30s. She is very easy to relate to, but has an idiosyncratic personality. She has a wide variety of friends and acquaintances with whom she maintains good relationships with. Despite her more laid back appearance and personality, Bizaar is highly organized as well as intuitive. On request, and with a few guided questions, she can connect you with someone she thinks would suit you. But she's more than a friend finder. Bizaar is so amazed at the menagerie of talent and expertise her friends holds, and she talks about them quite warmly. She has an infectious love of the passion and creativity in the world and loves the opportunity to connect these personalities. She is still however, protective of everyone she connects, and is wary of those who would use the opportunity for odious purposes.

IDEATION: Multi-booking process

We wanted to build long-term relationships with the Instructors, and we wanted to open the door for simple skills that only took one lesson to learn as well. Instead of making the users choose their class types through a series of complicated questions, we decided to "package" it, to make the information digestible. 

Based on the User Personas (see below) and the data from our interviews, I recommended on having 3 kinds of classes to offer users and Instructors. We decided to create the class types based on the needs of the user personas.

IDEATION: PROTOTYPE

You can find a full prototype of the site here

IDEATION: MOCKUPS

For a write-up about the Dashboard UI design, and information hierarchy with card sorting, click here.