Ad • But first a PSA from Minimalists Who Pity Messy People

Did you know that the more possessions you own, the more likely it is that they're plotting to suffocate you to death? ...Perhaps it's time to give minimalism a try.

Lately, I've been in the mood to purge my place of possessions and to my knowledge the toptions (top options) that I had at my disposal in terms of stuff disposal included:

I also remembered back to a time while living in my childhood house when my family had a yard sale. It got me thinking that in the nearly 20 years I've lived in multiple apartment buildings, I've never seen anyone throw a building equivalent of a yard sale. It was at this point where my product design cognitions copulated and my Suite Sale seed was sown.

After finding my muse...

and after many iterations...

and after even more iteration...

I landed on a design I thought was unique and easy to use.

And after nearly 1 month of strategising, coding, photographing, and copywriting, I ended up with a polished and user-friendly e-commerce platform with over 200 listed products.

For the last app I built I learned the MERN (MongoDB, ExpressJS, ReactJS, NodeJS) tech stack. So, this time around I wanted to build off of those tools by using this app as an opportunity to learn how to use Gatsby.js (a React-based frontend framework for creating dynamic and optimized websites), Google's Firebase (a helpful tool for database management and user authentication), and Netlify (a serverless platform used to build and deploy web apps).

Considering this app is essentially a marketplace, sans online payments, some of the main features that I implemented included:

External Notification (email and SMS)

I used Twillio for the first time in order to configure sending SMS and email notifications for users to receive updates on their transaction statuses.

User Transaction Planning

Being that this app is meant to be used by people living within the same building, I didn't see the need to facilitate online payments or transactions. Which meant that the main user interaction functionality was to facilitate the time and location that residents would meet each other. Developing a logistics roadmap by taking into account all of the possible interactions that could occur was probably the most interesting and complex puzzle that I got to solve for this project.

Item CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete) Operations

Arguably the most obvious feature was to program the ability for residents to post items that they intended to sell. Sounds simple enough, but of course this also meant configuring the ability to update and delete this items and to allow users to read and filter through the items database.

I enjoy creating a project from scratch as much as the next product designer out there, but being able to create something useful and profitable is my ultimate goal.

To my knowledge, a marketplace app usually makes the majority of their profits by syphoning off a percentage of a seller's earnings. In my case, I didn't see the need for configuring online payments, so any transaction that would take place between buyers and sellers would occur between them in person. In other words, there was no obvious place for me to take a percentage of the transactions that took place because of my site.

My first thought was that the whole reason I made this site was to allow myself to easy sell things, so the earnings I make from that would be payment in itself.

Later on in the process of making the app, I wanted to figure out a way to accommodate people who might not have cash or exact change on hand. After some research I discovered Wealthsimple Cash, Canada's fastest and simplest way to send and receive money. I also learned that they had a promotion where anytime someone signed up to their app using your referral link, you would each earn $20. So I decided to shamelessly promote my referral link throughout Suite Sale, thereby increasing the chance that residents would sign up to Wealthsimple Cash using my referral link.

Step 1

Step 2

Step 3

Step 4

Step 1 - The Flyer Creation

In order to promote Suite Sale to the residents in my building I used Figma to create these mini front & back flyer cards.

Step 2 - The Disguised Distribution

My plan was to walk through each floor and slide the card flyer through every resident's door. My only concern was that I didn't know whether there was a rule against distributing flyers in my building. So rather than looking into it like a normal adult might decide to do, I unleashed my inner child, slipped on a pair of fake glasses and evaded any footsteps I heard coming in my direction. Sleuth mode was officially activated and my mission was successfully carried out.