Watchlist Collections
Bringing customisable watchlists to the Trade Me apps to make it easier for Kiwi to organise and improve collaborative decision-making when browsing.
My role
Team
Designer, Product Manager, Product Owner, 6 developers, 2 testers
Platform
iOS & Android apps
The user problems
Finding what you want on Trade Me often involve other people, whether it’s looking for a new place to live together, deciding on a new family car, finding furniture for the flat or simply getting inspiration for a Christmas Wishlist. When talking to our property buyers, 90% of participants mentioned searching with others. Unfortunately due to the lack of customisation and collaboration on our watchlist makes it difficult for users make these shared decisions.
On average users save 22 listings to their watchlist across 4.5 categories. Given the disparity of our business units, users watchlist can become unwieldy or they can lose track of what and why they saved certain listings. Therefore, particularly within property users resort to tracking important properties via other means like Excel or Trello.
The solution
Considering both user problems, I designed a solution to enhance our existing watchlist feature that integrates seamlessly into out core browsing journey across the business. The solutions introduces the ability for users to organise their watchlist into collections and includes a shared watchlist functionality, where users are able to invite and share their watchlist with others to collaborate and offer second opinions
Do user want a way to organise and share their watchlist?
From previous property buyer research, we saw that 90% of participants interviewed involved others in their search and 30% mentioned they use external sources to keep track of their listings. With this research we were confident users wanted a way to keep track and share watchlist but is it true in practice? To gain confidence we ran a fake door test within our app by adding fake CTAs to create a collection and also to create a shared collection.
So was the test successful?
Yes and no. The sentiment for collections was overwhelmingly positive at 86%, whereas interest in sharing was at 32%. The main reason users clicked the “Create a collection” prompt was to “organise and sort my watchlist”. While collections was clearly desired, interest in sharing and collaboration was considerably less. There could be a number of reasons why users were not interested in the sharing aspect of the concept. Later usability test showed users see their watchlist as a very personal and private therefore it’s understandable there will be some hesitancy to share due to how the watchlist functioned (as a single list).
Designing the journey of shared watchlist collections
With the confidence that users wanted a way to organise their watchlist, I created concepts and prototypes while considering the future possibilities of introducing the shareable functionality. Due to the share functionality considerations, there were 4 user flows we had to consider. Each represents a type of user; how they would interact with each other and what functionality and permissions each should have.
No sharing, ability to create a custom watchlist
Owner of a shared watchlist
Being invited into a shared watchlist
Public shared watchlists
Requirements & constraints
There were several requirements and technical constraints that affected the UI and functionality of the feature:
Core Functionality: The watchlist is a core feature integrated into our monolithic codebase, making changes complex.
Integration Needs: We couldn't build the feature separately, as it would disrupt existing functionalities like listing notifications.
Broad Application: Since the watchlist spans multiple business units, the solution needed to be broad and not property-focused to avoid impacting other metrics and functionalities.
Future Vision: Although we aim to add shared watchlists in the future, the designs needed to keep this vision in consideration.
User Flexibility: The solution had to allow users to easily opt out and ensure seamless compatibility with the existing watchlist functionality.
Usability testing
Revised UI testing
During external testing, all participants had issues with the ‘Manage listing’ bottom sheet, often mistaking the ‘Remove from my Watchlist’ button for a confirmation button, leading to confusion. To address these issues, we tested revised bottom sheet designs aiming for improved clarity and usability.
I revised the designs twice to clearly convey that removing a listing from the ‘main watchlist’ also removes it from all custom collections. Listings must remain in the main watchlist to retain existing functionalities like notifications.
Iteration 1:
We improved the checkbox ticks with a micro-interaction where a plus changes to a tick, clearly indicating if an item is added. The 'Remove from Watchlist' button is now yellow for better recognition as it follows existing patterns
When users tap 'Remove from Watchlist,' all collection actions are disabled, and the ticks revert to plus signs. This visual change informs users that un-watchlisting an item removes it from all collections.
Results: Participants struggled to remove the struggled to remove the item completely from the watchlist, as they didn’t notice the yellow watchlist button at all, they assumed that unchecking all the ticks meant it removed the item from the watchlist.
Iteration 2:
We updated the yellow 'remove from watchlist' button to match the visual style of the rest of the sheet, with subtle sectioning differences for clarity. The functionality remains unchanged.
Results: All but one participant completed the tasks, including the task to remove from all watchlist. This iteration was a clear success was the design recommended to move forward with.
What was implemented?
After running a story mapping and thin slicing session with the team we decided to start focusing on finalising the first phase of the project; To give the ability to create custom watchlists so user can organise their watchlist. This will allow us to get something in the hands of our users, so we can learn and fail fast.
By adding collection into the core flow, it adds an ‘extra step’ to the journey which could cause friction or a barrier to users who don’t want to use collections. To solve this, we added a snack bar that appears when a user saves a listing that allows them to opt in if they are interested.
Once the user has opt into collections, every time they watchlist an item a multi functional bottom sheet opens. This bottom sheet is a core part of the flow for the user to manage their listings in a collection. They can un-watchlist, create, add or move listings to a new collection all in one place which helps our users to continue to organise their watchlist as they browse.
With the addition of collections, the watchlist screen will have transformed, showing watchlist items organised into beautiful custom lists. Users still have access to the original watchlist still but now renamed as ‘All saved listings’.
The results
In the early rollout, we saw an 8.6% uptake, with over 4,000 collections created by 2,500 members. Our success measure was 5%, so this was excellent, especially without onboarding or marketing. About 1 in 10 eligible users engaged with collections. After a few months, we are seeing a steady uptake, with over 50,000 active users using collections now.
We added a feedback feature to get direct feedback from our users regarding this feature.There were two highly popular requests: sorting items within a collection and the ability to share watchlist with others. Watchlist collections are now available to all iOS and Android users, and we plan to incorporate these requested features into our roadmap soon!
© 2024 Design by Florence Lo with Framer