Thrifty Warriors (B2B)
a warehouse management system built to support reliable marketplace flow.
Role
Product Designer
Tools
Figma, Figjam, Adobe Illustrator
Involvement
Product Design, UX Research, Design System
"I thought this was available, but it was gone days ago…"
What keeps a marketplace running isn’t just listings, but the quieter steps of intake, review, storage, and more. What could we do to keeps every state in order?
Context
When students move out, the marketplace alone isn’t enough. Behind every listing is a messy reality: items arrive in bulk, need approval, storage, tracking, and eventually removal. Without a system to manage these flows, the marketplaces risk turning into cluttered, unreliable spaces.
The Problem
Current resale platforms often leave lifecycle management to individual sellers. Items that should be removed remain visible, creating ghost listings. Buyers waste effort, sellers repeat themselves, and the platform loses credibility. The absence of backend ownership makes marketplaces noisy and inefficient, and at scale this noise becomes impossible to manage.
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.
From Pain Points to Operational Backbone
The same issues that frustrated users also revealed a gap in our operations: without a backend system, the marketplace couldn’t scale or keep availability reliable. We realized our marketplace needed a backbone — a warehouse system to handle intake, review, storage, and removal at scale.
Ideation
Our marketplace and warehouse system were designed together as a single ecosystem. While the B2C platform focuses on user-facing listing and discovery, the B2B warehouse system acts as its operational backbone, handling intake, review, storage, and removal at scale.
Mapping the Flow
The user flow outlines the key actions for buyers, platform processes and sellers. Buyers can browse, purchase, and track orders, while sellers submit items and receive updates.
By mapping the flow, we saw where manual processes broke down and where a system could take over. From here we asked:
How Might We
design a platform that keeps every listing accurate, organized, and reliable at scale?
With this in mind, we turned research insights into 3 early design directions.
The Solution
01
Keep context visible
Stay on one screen while switching between Details, Warehouse, Orders, and Other tabs — key info remains anchored, reducing cognitive load.
02
Edit without losing place
Make quick changes in a side panel without leaving the main list, keeping staff in flow.
03
Handle items in bulk
Approve, assign, or move multiple listings at once to speed up high-volume intake and cut repetitive work.
Testing
Using the final prototype, I invited people from the earlier interviews to take part in usability testing. They were asked to run through the warehouse prototype to handle intake, switch between tabs, and track storage. The focus was to see what worked smoothly and where they stalled.
Switch Tabs
Users could easily switch between tabs without losing context or making mistakes.
Batch Processing
Users could process multiple items at once, cutting clicks and speeding up intake.
Track Items
Users could quickly find items but strongly prefer a clearer manual add option.
Next Steps
This project taught me that system design isn’t about flashy screens—it’s about clarity, responsibility, and flow. By mapping responsibilities across buyers, sellers, and the platform, I was able to design a backend system that supports both operational efficiency and user trust.