A Platform to Empower Students, Created By Students

Like most universities, Cornell’s campus is filled with students whose needs are constantly changing, especially in terms of furniture, clothing, textbooks, and many more personal belongings. As our housing circumstances, classes, and the seasons change, our needs change. However, when trying to fulfill our changing needs, students face a paradox: we’re living on a budget but we consistently need to buy new items. As students on Cornell’s App Development project team, we understand this need first hand, and set out to create an app to solve this problem. That’s where Resell enters the picture — an app where Cornell students can sell used items, such that other Cornell students can buy them off of each other, to make it simple, affordable, and sustainable for students to buy items they need. 

Over the course of 3 months, we have developed the app’s MVP and are planning to launch the app in early 2022.

Researching The Problem

Before creating any mockups, Ravina (one of my co-designers) and I did some market research to define the exact problem we were trying to solve through this platform, and asked students about their experiences buying and selling used items. We interviewed around 10 students in person, and also sent a Google survey out to the campus community to do some larger-scale market research.

Key Findings

Students needs are constantly changing throughout the semester and they want to purchase new items (specifically, textbooks, furniture, and clothing)

• It’s difficult for students to purchase affordable items in Ithaca:

  • Shipping to Ithaca costs a lot of money and takes a lot of time

  • Not everyone has a car in Ithaca to drive to stores they can shop at

  • New items cost more than they want to spend on items they don’t need for an extensive period of time 

• When buying used items online, people worry about the legitimacy of the people they are buying items from 

• Students are always looking for ways to make money, and have items they no longer need that they would be willing to sell for profit

The Solution

Based on these findings, we determined that we need to create a platform to serve 2 stakeholders: student buyers and student sellers — some people may act as both. We decided to limit the user base of this app to Cornell students (by requiring users to log-in with their Cornell email) to isolate the user base of this app to a community students feel they can trust. Also, if everyone is a Cornell student, the handoff between buyers and sellers is easier, because students all live within 20 minutes walking distance of each other and feel comfortable meeting up with fellow students. In our app, we strive to solve the problem of Cornell students needing affordable, sustainable, and reliable ways to shop in Ithaca by creating an app that will serve our 2 stakeholders by (1) empowering students to earn money by selling their unwanted items at more affordable prices and (2) offer these unwanted items to students in the Cornell community.

Content Requirements

On Resell, users will be able to upload items to sell, browse through items other users are selling, save items, chat with buyers/sellers, negotiate prices, and send their availability in an easy to read way.

For the MVP, Resell will have 4 main pages: (1) the home page with a feed of products users are selling, (2) a saved feed where users can see everything they have saved, (3) a chat feature where they can access their conversations with sellers/buyers about specific products, and (4) their profile where they can see what they are selling and upload new items to sell.

Medium Fidelity Explorations

Home Page

User Profile Page

Product Details Page

Visual Style & Branding

Currently, my co-designers and I are working on using fonts and colors to brand Resell. We’ve defined Resell with 4 adjectives that pinpoint the exact problem this app aims to solve: affordable, sustainable, reliable and chic. With our visual explorations, we are striving to create a clean, modern feel to the app, while also reflecting how Resell aims to empower users to become sellers themselves and use our platform to make a profit for themselves.

After we receive feedback from our fellow designers on AppDev as well as from other members on our team, we will decide on a final visual design style, and will convert all of our medium fidelity mock-ups into this style. We finalized the color choices, settling on a purple to peach gradient (pictured in the fourth mockup above) because we felt this gradient of colors reflected the variety of products this app would bring to students. The colorful nature of as well as the dashed lines reflect the “do it yourself” aspects of the app, in how we are empowering users to earn money, spend less, and be more sustainable by selling items themselves through this app. 

Next Steps & Reflection

With finals and the end of the Fall 2021 semester upon us, we are wrapping up work for Resell for the semester! In the last few weeks, we hope to finalize the visual design style based upon feedback from our fellow designers on Cornell AppDev, as well as based on our personal judgement for what aligns most with the brand personality we are creating. As the frontend and backend developers wrap up coding the app,, we are hoping to launch Resell’s MVP in early 2022, for Cornell students to start using it!

This experience helped me realize why I love design so much: I love finding a problem, and using my design process and product thinking skills to develop a viable solution that will have a meaningful impact on communities. My friends who participated in user interviews for this project consistently ask me how the app is coming along, and I’m excited about how they are so keen to see the progress of the app and use it once it launches. This is my first time designing an app from the ground up, and I’ve really enjoyed the agency I’ve had to create this app’s brand — from identifying the adjectives we want this app to embody, to finding a way to visually manifest these traits. I’m beyond excited to share this app with the Cornell community in the coming months!