Boosting transactions and enhancing Depop’s appeal to its core demographic through a localized marketplace addressing key user needs and pain points.
PROJECT DETAILS
ROLE
Lead Product Designer
TIMELINE
Sep 2024 - Dec 2025
TEAM
1 PM
5 Designers
DISCIPLINE
Product Strategy
UX Research
User Flow
PROJECT SUMMARY
Depop is a social e-commerce platform that connects users to buy and sell unique fashion items, fostering a vibrant, community-driven marketplace.
Our team was tasked to conduct extensive user and ethnographic research to deepen our understanding of American college students with the goal of making Depop the go-to platform for style conscious students. Through our insights, I developed a strategic solution to accomplish this: a localized community marketplace, enabling students to buy and sell within their college communities. This solution directly addressed key pain points uncovered in our research, strengthening Depop’s appeal among college students.
WHAT IS DEPOP?
Depop is a Gen-Z centric e-commerce platform for second-hand clothes.
Depop is a peer-to-peer social shopping app that allows users to buy, sell, and discover secondhand and vintage fashion, primarily targeting Gen Z and young millennials. They have 40+ million registered users.
THE PROBLEM
Despite their youthful user base, college student engagement was particularly low.
Our team was tasked to conduct extensive UX research and ethnographic studies on American college students, focusing on their behaviors and habits surrounding fashion and second-hand shopping to help us ultimately answer:
How might we make Depop the first place that style-conscious students look for clothes?
OUR APPROACH
Exploring sentiment on 4 key themes to establish a foundational understanding of users.
Style
How do students express identity and gain fit confidence?
Lifestyle & Culture
How do campus moments and friends drive purchases?
Secondhand vs. Retail
When and why do they choose secondhand over retail?
Marketplaces
How do the different platforms compare and how can Depop leverage this?
STYLE
Style is both self-expression and socially mediated, with mindsets clustering into distinct archetypes.
In understanding how students navigate fashion, it was clear that these style mindsets are distinct and predictable.
We identified 4 personas:
Niche Freak
Individualistic and underground.
Practical Dresser
Comfort and minimalism over novelty.
Basic Bee
Trend-driven, friend/social-validated.
First-Gen Hustler
Budget-conscious but style-savvy.
Even with varying mindsets fit certainty and low effort matter to everyone.
LIFESTYLE & CULTURE
Thrifting is a highly social activity, with purchases tied to the rhythms of student life.
Most students discover thrifting through friends, and view it as a social activity. Furthermore, campus events, such as rush week, game days, and holidays spur shopping for students.
SECONDHAND VS. RETAIL
Students love secondhand for value and uniqueness, but anxiety around shipping, fees, and fit uncertainty often push them away.
The biggest barrier to secondhand wasn't intent – it was fees, shipping, and fit anxiety.
MARKETPLACES
Depop's brand suffers from markup/"reseller" perception and trust concerns.
Students rotate across platforms, buying on Depop only when the deal beats elsewhere as effort and fees are often cited as a push-factor for Depop.
ONE THROUGH-LINE
Fees and lag time block purchases while perceived effort discourage casual sellers; and social validation accelerates decisions.
Returning to our initial objective of making Depop the go-to destination for style-conscious users, I ideated several solutions based on the insights uncovered.
SOLUTION
Campus Circle is a Depop mode for verified students to buy and sell locally.
Campus Circle eliminate the hassle and stigma around shipping, reduces buyer fees/friction, and leans into the social nature of thrifting.
ONBOARDING & TRUST
University selection and verification to reduce safety concerns and establish campus-bound identity.
Campus-only visibility and verification signals accountability while building trust and community for buyers and sellers.
BROWSING & DISCOVERY
Prioritizing browsing & discovery through local liquidity and a filter.
Default surfacing to nearby, verified inventory increases math rate and reduces time-to-first sale.
BROWSING & DISCOVERY
Contextual modules to bring a student-life lens to categories for relevance.
The rhythm of student-life and campus events (eg. Game days, rush week etc.) are key factors in purchases.
This contextual module makes it easy to shop for moments vs. isolated items.
LISTING FLOW
Campus Circle defaults away from shipping specs, removing biggest blocker to selling.
Users can choose to list to either Depop (ship) or Campus Circle, with the shipping specs only appearing if they select to ship.
By removing shipping complexity and requiring minimal input fields, we expect to see higher casual-seller activation and a more fresh inventory tied to campus seasons.
PURCHASE & PICKUP
Social-nature of fashion and thrifting leveraged through DMs for meetups and purchases.
IMPACT – WHY IT WORKS
Campus Circle moves the needle for Depop by eliminating friction, building community building, and forming habits.
Eliminates top frictions
Shpping, fees, and fitting risk that keep students in retail are removed as barriers.
Builds community
Depop can be the default secondhand destination on campus through a repeatable growth loop.
Creates a habit
Campus events where need and urgency are highest create anchors for students to rely on Depop.