Freeing & Refining Functionality for FreeSpot:
a UX (re)Design Case Study
Overview.
FreeSpot is a free marketplace designed to reduce waste by providing a platform where users can give away or discover resources of all kinds.
The goal of this project was to evaluate and address usability challenges within FreeSpot’s native mobile app. Working collaboratively with my UX team, we conducted a full audit and delivered a redesign aimed at improving the overall user experience for its growing community of 2,000+ subscribers.
My Role:
UX Researcher | Designer | Scrum Master
Duration: 15 Days
Project Status: Complete
Business Research.
In our initial team meeting, we identified several critical issues with the FreeSpot app, including broken search functionality, frequent crashes, and a confusing navigation flow. To ground our design decisions in context, we began our research by exploring FreeSpot from a business perspective.
We conducted both a Competitive Matrix Analysis and a Competitive Feature Analysis to uncover insights into FreeSpot’s positioning, key partners, cost structure, and potential revenue streams.
By mapping FreeSpot and its competitors along a scale from general-purpose to specialized platforms—and from nonprofit to for-profit—we gained clarity on where FreeSpot stands in the broader market. We then examined each competitor’s app to compare key features, goals, and user functions, helping us identify areas of opportunity and differentiation for our redesign.
User Research.
Before conducting user research, we met with our client to better understand their perspective on the problem space. They shared that while many of their users have experience with platforms like Craigslist, OfferUp, and LetGo, they are specifically seeking a platform focused exclusively on free goods—one that also allows users to request items they need.
The client provided the following problem statement to guide our work:
"How might we provide people with a way to give away free stuff and request stuff within their communities?"
Affinity Map.
We conducted interviews with 12 participants, capturing insights from both item givers and receivers. From these conversations, we extracted key themes and user sentiments, organizing them into an affinity map using Post-It notes. This helped us surface patterns in user behavior, expectations, and pain points, which informed our next steps in the design process.
“I” Statements to Insights.
To humanize our data and better understand user needs, we grouped common sentiments from our interviews into labeled themes. We then translated these themes into “I” statements, which allowed us to distill clear, actionable insights:
"I want to know who I'm dealing with." → Users want a credible platform that authenticates all users and provides tools to vet others themselves.
"I feel good helping others."
→ Givers enjoy donating items if they believe it benefits someone in need.
"I prefer giving to someone I know or trust."
→ Users value trust and familiarity when giving away personal belongings.
Personas.
Building on the themes from our affinity map, we created two primary personas to represent the core user groups:
Eddie is a college student who’s always looking for ways to save money. He actively searches for free items to support his budget-conscious lifestyle.
Eddie the Budgeter.
Marcella enjoys decluttering and donating. She represents users who are motivated by altruism and sustainability, and who want to easily give away items they no longer need.
Marcella the Giver.
Based on our user research and journey mapping, we refined our original problem statement to address both user types more directly:
"How might we help provide Eddie and Marcella a way to exchange free things in an efficient and secure manner?"
Our focus shifted toward understanding Marcella's experience, as we observed a significant imbalance—FreeSpot had far more receivers than givers. We wanted to explore the barriers that might be discouraging people from giving.
To better empathize with Marcella, we created a user journey map that illustrated her experience while trying to give something away. This helped us identify friction points and opportunities to create a smoother, more rewarding experience for givers.
Design Process.
To kick off the design phase, we conducted usability testing on the current version of the FreeSpot app. While users found the concept compelling and appreciated its purpose, they expressed hesitation about using the platform due to several frustrating usability issues.
Recognizing the potential of the app—and the barriers to adoption—we began planning our redesign.
Design Studio Session.
We invited FreeSpot CEO, Daryl Holman Jr., to participate in a collaborative design studio session. Each team member sketched key screens around core features and functionality in timed rounds, presenting ideas and receiving feedback from the group.
This collaborative approach helped align our vision with the client’s goals while generating a wide range of design directions to explore further.
Mid-Fidelity Prototyping
Some of the changes made:
Moved the search bar to the top of the screen for higher visibility/accessibility.
Added more options to the tab bar and a hamburger menu to provide app support to users.
Revised the formatting of the existing app by segmenting the home screen feed of posts by categories.
(Wanna give it a go? Link to Figma prototype can be found here.)
High-fi.
Informed by all of the data we collected from our research, insights drawn from usability tests as well as drawing from UX conventions such as heuristics, we developed a redesign that would address the pain points users experienced in the free marketplace. And it looks pretty cool too!
Testing.
For our third round of testing our focus was on understanding the issues users ran into in previous tests we worked towards lowering the difficulty ratings, time on tasks and maximizing the amount of directly successful user flows.
Test Results
Overall we saw substantial improvements from our first test of the existing app, to our final test of the High-fi prototype. Most notably was our tasks 4 and 6 had an enormous leap, jumping from 20% to 80% success rates for completing the tasks.
Recommendations and Conclusion
After final review of our last round of testing, we made the following recommendations in our Research Report:
Highlight the Create Post icon so that a user’s attention is drawn to it in the tab bar.
Utilize a hamburger menu for secondary navigation for FAQ, Safety Recommendations, and a feedback form.
Display distance information on feed screen and post pages.
Create post screens need a clearer explanation for what fields are for to improve accessibility.
Iterate on the high-fidelity version further and conduct more usability testing with avid FreeSpot users.
As we concluded our report we felt confident in our data and that our work towards improving the FreeSpot app will help subscribers by providing a more streamlined and effective way to give and obtain the resources they need. We look forward to seeing this product continue to flourish and provide value for local communities to GET FREE!
Fin
Thanks for reading!
To learn more about me, visit: https://www.linkedin.com/in/robindshumays/