Yardzie.

Mobile App

Overview

Project Manager: Laraib Sarmad

Researcher: Keertana Gunnam

Tools: Figma, Photoshop, FigJam, Lottie

Duration: 13 Weeks

My Role: UI/UX Designer, Research, Graphic Designer, Wireframing, Prototyping, User flows, Usability testing, Animations

Year: 2025

Overview

Yardzie began with a simple question: why is something as personal and local as a yard sale still so complicated online? We noticed that while people still loved the idea of finding local treasures or decluttering their homes, most online platforms made the process feel impersonal and complicated. In response, we immersed ourselves in the experiences of local sellers and buyers, developing personas that captured their needs and frustrations. This approach shaped our entire design process from research to final prototype. Yardzie was born from the idea of bringing the community feel of yard sales into a simple digital experience.

Problem

Yard sales are a great way for people to declutter, earn extra income, and find affordable secondhand items. However, the process remains outdated and sellers often rely on paper signs outside or Facebook groups, which limit visibility and engagement. Buyers struggle to locate sales, preview items, and get reliable directions and sellers struggle to attract local buyers and lose motivation altogether.

How might we design a mobile app that connects sellers and buyers through a simple and community driven yard sale experience?

Solution

Create a community driven mobile app that makes yard sales easy to find, host, and trust and where buyers can quickly and easily browse local listings and maps, and sellers can effortlessly create and manage their own yards.

User Research

Survey

To find out how people went about garage and yard sales, I conducted user surveys to over 20 people asking more about their experience with attending, hosting, and navigating yard sales and what were some of the paint points and issues they faced.

We asked: "How do you go about hosting or visiting a garage sale and what are key frustrations you encounter with these?"

“I waste time going to sales that don’t have what I’m looking for, or I can’t find the location easily.”
- Home Owner, 46


“I drive around on weekends sometimes, check on Facebook, or sometimes I'll see a post on some other sites like Craigslist.”

- Home Owner, 52

“I've always thought about setting up a garage sale, but I always get scared that maybe people won't visit or know I'm having one.”

- Home Owner, 41

Main Research Insights

  • Many home owners and neighbors wanted an easy discoverability method for local sale events without the need for wandering blindly outside their reach.

  • Many people don't have experience with online selling or listings so making the process of posting any items or hosting yard sales was to be simple and achievable by anyone.

  • Community engagement was a feature to be desired so having ways to allow locals to interact and stay updated with each other was something that would allow others to stay attentive and engaged.

Design Insights

  • Many of our participants were daily users of apps such as Facebook and Instagram as well as WhatsApp for other forms of communication. Incorporating familiar design elements and information architecture would allow for a smoother transition to a newer app.

  • Seamless seller to buyer connection (posting/browsing).

  • Balance usability with community feel (approachable design).

  • Encourage sustainable reuse by making secondhand shopping accessible and giving local updates which are features users are able to access on arrival.

User Personas

Competitive Analysis

To understand how Yardzie could stand out in the local buying and selling space, I conducted a competitive analysis of three major platforms: Facebook Marketplace, Nextdoor, and OfferUp. These apps were chosen because they each address aspects of community based selling but differ in user experience, target audience, and social engagement.

Facebook Marketplace was selected for its wide reach and strong social integration. It allows users to easily browse local listings through familiar social media interactions, but it lacks a dedicated focus on yard sales. The experience can feel cluttered, and users often have to filter through unrelated items to find what they want.

Nextdoor provided valuable insights into how neighborhood based apps build trust and community. Its strength lies in fostering hyperlocal connections, but its marketplace feature feels secondary and lacks visual appeal for listing events like yard sales.

OfferUp stood out for its mobile first experience and clear item categorization. However, its design focuses more on transactional buying and selling rather than social or event based exchanges.

By analyzing these competitors, I identified opportunities for Yardzie to combine the best aspects of each:

  • The community trust of Nextdoor

  • The discoverability and reach of Facebook Marketplace

  • The ease of listing and browsing from OfferUp

This analysis helped shape Yardzie’s value proposition as a dedicated platform tailored for hosting and discovering yard sales in a way that feels local, intuitive, and community driven.

User Flow

Design Process

My design process for Yardzie began with conducting surveys and interviews to understand the community’s current challenges and motivations. I conducted informal interviews and gathered online feedback from neighborhood forums to identify common pain points such as the difficulty of advertising sales, limited visibility, and inconsistent ways of sharing location details. These insights helped define Yardzie’s main goal: to make hosting and finding yard sales more accessible and engaging.

Using these findings, I translated the research into sketches that mapped out the app’s core user flows: browsing nearby yard sales, creating a listing, and managing event/yard details. The sketches helped me quickly test layout ideas and visualize how users would navigate the experience.

Next, I created low fidelity wireframes to refine the structure and usability of each screen, focusing on clarity and simplicity. This included designing intuitive icons, streamlined navigation, and logical grouping of actions such as view "My Yard”, “Check on Maps”, and "Send Offer." In my original mockups, the onboarding was simple text and descriptions with simple icons that were unengaging and I found a lot of tests involved users skipping through without reading. To combat this, I researched other apps that utilized creative onboarding methods which invited users into their products with clarity on their goals which is what I aimed to achieve. I built low fidelity key frame animations for onboarding to help new users understand how Yardzie works in an interactive way by using motion graphics to demonstrate how to browse or list a sale without overwhelming the experience.

The key was for users to understand what was happening in the illustrations and have the assisting text below serve as a guide to pair with the animations. Each step of the process was driven by the goal of balancing functionality and familiarity, ensuring that users could intuitively perform tasks while still feeling that the app had a friendly, community centered personality.

Usability Testing

I conducted usability testing with 3 users, two of which were homeowners and one being a younger resident. I tested users using my low fidelity prototype through which I gained feedback on many of the features and the flow of the app. One of the things that was improved upon was users wanting a thumbnail and status of a yard shown. Adding extra icons to differentiate sections on portions of the app was also added to assist users in navigating and identifying features.

One of the biggest additions to this project was of course the animated section as shown in the earlier wireframes sketches. Earlier renditions of the prototype showcased still icons and bold text before feedback showed lots of skipping and disinterest in viewing the onboarding sections of the app. This was improved to show key moving thumbnails to showcase the features of app where motion graphics were prioritized to speak to the user instead of relying on text.

Design

For the color choice of this app, we chose to go with a softer pastel and wooden themed color choice. Originally, we wanted to go with a green or blueish path to mimic the outside colors of nature, but we wanted to diverge from a lot of the design systems that were already implemented by other apps using this approach so we chose to go with a less appreciated and wooden themed color. It features shades of brown featuring some soft pink with a white primary background. The bottom nav bar features two sets of color switches however, only one is used to showcase bright mode version throughout the app.

Animations

To create a more engaging and welcoming experience, I designed illustrated animations for Yardzie’s onboarding flow. Inspired by products like Google Meet and other modern apps, these animations explain the app’s value in a clear, friendly way while making the interface more visually appealing. The animations highlight key features such as discovering nearby yard sales, previewing items, and easily hosting your own sale. By pairing illustrations with motion, the onboarding feels lively, approachable, and memorable, helping users quickly understand how Yardzie can make their yard sale experience easier.

Final Designs

Onboarding Screens

Main Screens

Key Features

Create Yard

Create your yard by adding categories. names, location and items to your yard in just a minute

Discover a Sale

Find a yard, navigate through items, and send an offer and discover the many treasures that await to be claimed.

Edit Items

Easily add, remove, and edit items for your sales in just a few taps.

Map away

Find any sales using the map function to easily find, message sellers, and discover items.

Bid and Offer

Be able to accept and reject offers, send counter offers, and receive notifications to make your yard experience better.

Prototype

Final Testing

Using my final high fidelity prototype, I conducted testing with the same 3 users from our previous testing to gauge all the features of the app. My test revolved around the main 3 tasks which included creating a yard, finding a yard, and finally viewing an item and sending an offer. These tasks carried the heart and soul of what this app provides from a sellers' and buyers' perspective.

The most notable result of this testing was the positive reaction and engagement with the newer visuals and most notably the speed of which the tasks were completed which were much faster than the previous prototypes.

Conclusion

Outcome

I created an app which I believe successfully reimagines the yard sale experience by bridging community connection with great digital tools. Through research, I uncovered key frustrations difficulty finding sales, lack of trust, missing filters, and confusing listing methods and addressed them through clearer navigation, simpler dashboard, and guided selling flows. Creating a design and experience that support and leans towards empathy for both buyers and sellers to engage in an app that will promote a healthier selling experience within a community.

From this project, I learned the importance of translating research into real solutions and how usability testing can highlight critical pain points and clearer user insights. I also learned how to create visuals and animate them and I did this with many portions of the onboarding process to help users absorb the experience of the app more better. It helps give a unique approach to the app itself and gives a welcoming and fun experience for users.

Most importantly, I noticed significant growth in my research methods. Early on, my approach was more general, but as I progressed, I learned to design research that was more focused and purposeful such as asking clearer questions and selecting methods that directly aligned with project goals.

Feedback from more experienced designers and mentors helped me recognize gaps in my user interviews and survey structure. Their insights guided me to dig deeper into user motivations and behaviors rather than surface level preferences. This feedback not only improved the quality of my findings but also strengthened my ability to translate research insights into actionable design decisions.

Looing Forward

Things that I could improve on conducting more usability testing than I already did to further improve the app navigation and feel for both buyers and sellers to make sure both parties can be engaged and attentive. Gauging comments, thoughts, and general feedback from users and successfully translating those into clear solutions for future prototypes is something I think I could improve on and quickly note take those ideas during testing.

I think most importantly is to establish a consistent solid design system earlier for the project to follow which would help not only myself but people the I’m working with as well so we can all follow a simple and effective workflow that would improve our process and delivery in the future.

Looking back, I would refine some of my research to be more feature specific instead of a generalist approach like I did early on. A more focused approach such as surveying users about particular app features could have uncovered deeper usability insights and informed more precise design improvements with most the features rather than a few.

I think most importantly, my prototyping and wireframing skills took a giant leap with this project which I will lead with more confidence and improvement going forward!

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