Thrifty Warriors (B2C)
A managed resale service that makes clearing essentials simple before moving out.
Role
Product Designer
Tools
Figma, Figjam, Adobe Illustrator
Involvement
Product Design, UX Research, Design System
"I had to toss my mattress and spent the first night on the floor at my new place."
Clearing out space before a move is a chaotic, last-minute game. But why does it always feel so overwhelming? What can we do to ease the load?
Context
Relocating is a universal challenge, especially when it comes to handling large items. Without enough time, space, or energy to clear out belongings, perfectly usable items often pile up or are discarded. Meanwhile, many people struggle to find affordable essentials.
If one needs to give and one needs to get, what’s missing in between?
The Problem
There’s no fast, low-effort way to pass on items that cannot be taken along. Existing online marketplacesmake both selling and buying a long, repetitive process that slows people down during an already stressful time.
For sellers, even when they know exactly what they want to list, completing a sale takes 6 separate steps before the item is finally sold.
Create Listings
Wait for Buyers
Reply Messages
Negotiate Price
Arrange Pickup
Item Sold
Buyers face a comparable challenge. Even with a specific item in mind, they still go through 6 steps to complete a purchase.
Search Listings
Pick a Listing
Send Messages
Negotiate Price
Arrange Pickup
Item Bought
Each transaction drags through the same steps: messages, negotiations, pickup plans. And even after all that, the handoff often falls through, leaving items unsold as time runs out.
Research Insights
What do people really go through when trying to part with items during a move? I conducted user interviews to understand what people hoped to do, what got in the way, and how they felt when things didn’t go as planned. Here's what we heard and what we took away from those conversations.
What we heard
“ No time to sort. Tossed in a rush. Regret came after. ”
- bruce, moving on a tight deadline
“ Platforms are slow, buyers are flaky, donation is hard. ”
- judy, solo move with no ride
“ Listed it. Waited. Gave up and eventually dumped it. ”
- elena, moving to a smaller dorm
What we learned
🧹 What matters is getting the room empty
People don’t have time to wait for the perfect buyer. They need the room cleared before handover, even if that means throwing things away.
⏱️ No time to “do the right thing”
Many sellers try to resell or donate first, but under tight moving deadlines, slow replies and failed buyer negotiations often lead them to give up.
💸 Throwing away costs twice
People feel bad tossing perfectly usable items, especially when they know they’ll buy it back again. Sometimes, they have to pay to throw it away.
Ideation
After research, we realized that the challenge wasn't how to sell better. It was getting people to act before dumping. On a deadline, the priority isn’t resale value, it’s making things disappear fast.
How Might We
With this in mind, we turned research insights into 3 early design directions.
From here, I narrowed the directions into the three design decisions that shaped the final solution.
The Solution
Thrifty Warriors fixes 1 thing: clearing items shouldn’t be harder than moving. Instead of chasing resale value, it removes friction from letting go.
01
Cut the process from 6 steps to 3
On most marketplaces, selling one item means creating a listing, waiting for buyers, replying to messages, negotiating, and arranging pick-up. That’s six chances to lose time — and six chances to abandon the process.
Snap a photo
Schedule Drop-off
Instead of conversations and coordination, users hand off their items in minutes. It reframes the marketplace from a negotiation platform into a managed resale service designed for speed.
02
Let AI do the heavy lifting
Manually entering titles, categories, and conditions is often enough to stop movers from listing at all. With Thrifty Warriors, a single photo generates draft listings with suggested details, leaving users to simply review and approve. The result is a faster start that lowers the barrier to participation.
03
A safety net when selling isn’t an option
Some items will never sell, yet people still need them gone. The system integrates donation, recycling, and removal services so that even unsellable items can be cleared responsibly. This ensures closure and peace of mind under tight deadlines.
Testing
Using the final prototype, I invited people from the earlier interviews to take part in usability testing. They were asked to complete three core tasks: switching mode, claiming payment, and adding a missing item, while thinking aloud as they worked through each flow.
Switch Mode
Users quickly switched between buyer and seller views, finding the toggle clear and intuitive.
Payment Flow
Users were able to claim their payout and found the flow straightforward.
Add a missing item
Users had trouble when items weren’t detected and looked for a way to add items manually.
Design System
Next Steps
This project taught me to slow down, research carefully, and question real needs. It pushed me beyond “making selling easier” to ask what “getting rid of stuff” really means under deadline pressure.
While we haven’t had the chance to refine this idea further yet, I’m hoping to explore partnerships with removal companies as a next step—so even when things can’t be sold, they can still be cleared responsibly.
And though I’ve continued the work alone, I want to thank my friends who first came up with the name and initial idea for Thrifty Warriors with me. This version wouldn’t exist without that early spark.
