A managed resale service that makes clearing essentials simple before moving out.
Role
Product Designer
Tools
Involvement
Product Strategy, Research Synthesis, Product Design
"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. On existing online marketplaces, both selling and buying second-hand items involve a long, repetitive process that often 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
Send Messages
Negotiate Price
Arrange Pickup
Item Bought
Each transaction takes time, with both buyers and sellers repeating the same steps: messages, negotiations, and pickup plans for every single item. Even after all this back-and-forth, a successful handoff isn’t guaranteed. Many items never end up sold or bought while people run out of time to deal with them.
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.
“ 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 effortful. ”
- judy, solo move with no ride
“ Listed it. Waited. Gave up and eventually dumped it. ”
- elena, moving to a smaller dorm
🧹 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 giving things away or tossing them.
⏱️ People don’t have 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 costs more than just the item
People feel bad tossing perfectly usable items, especially when they know they’ll likely need to buy it again. Sometimes, they even have to pay to throw it away.
Ideation
After research, we realized that the challenge wasn't how to sell better. It was how to get people to do anything before dumping their stuff. For people moving on a deadline, the real priority isn't resale value, it's making things disappear as soon as possible. So instead of asking "How can we help users sell more easily?", we asked:
How Might We
help people offload what they can’t bring when moving on a tight timeline?
With this in mind, we turned research insights into 3 early design directions.
🔍 What we saw
Re-define what's a successful outcome
For users on a tight timeline, a successful outcome isn’t always a sale, sometimes it’s just getting things out of the way.
From here, I narrowed the directions into the three design decisions that shaped the final solution.
The Solution
Thrifty Warriors was designed to fix one thing: clearing out items shouldn’t feel harder than moving itself. Instead of maximizing resale value, it reduces the friction of letting go. The prototype is built around three design decisions: shrinking the process from six steps to three, letting AI handle busywork like item details, and providing fallback paths when selling isn’t possible. Together, these choices give users what they actually need — a fast, low-effort way to clear their rooms before the clock runs out.
01
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.
Create Listings
Wait for Buyers
Reply Messages
Negotiate Price
Arrange Pickup
Item Sold
This flow reduces it to three:
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
Normally, creating a listing means typing out every detail: title, category, condition, price. For movers packing up a room, that friction is enough to stop them from posting at all.
Here, users simply take a photo of their space. The system automatically detects multiple items, crops them, and generates draft listings with suggested categories and conditions.
This shifts the effort from form-filling to quick confirmation, helping users get past the first hurdle and actually start listing.
03
Not everything can be sold. Some items are too worn, or simply don’t meet the standard. Without alternatives, users are left stuck: the very problem this service aims to solve.
Thrifty Warriors builds in clear fallback paths: items that don’t qualify can be donated, recycled, or scheduled for removal through partners.
This guarantees closure. Even when items can’t find a buyer, users still walk away with an empty room and peace of mind.
Testing
I ran quick usability testing with students who had recently moved, using the final prototype. Participants were asked to complete three core flows: listing an item, claiming payment, and handling items that couldn’t be listed.
The results were consistent. Switching modes and claiming payout were completed without friction, and participants could locate fallback options when selling wasn’t possible. The main breakdown came from AI detection, when an item wasn’t recognized, users stalled and looked for a clearer manual add option.
This confirmed the design works in principle but also revealed its biggest risk: over-reliance on automation. The next step is to design and test a more visible “Add manually” path to make the flow resilient when AI fails.
Switch Mode
Users quickly switched between buyer and seller views, finding the toggle intuitive.
Payment Flow
Users could clearly understood how to claim their payout and found the flow straightforward.
Fallback Options
Users were able to locate donation and recycling options when items weren’t approved.
Add a missing item
Users had trouble when items weren’t detected and looked for a way to add an item manually.
Design System
Next Steps
This project has taught me more than just how to design a product. It taught me to slow down, research carefully, and question what people truly need. It pushed me to think beyond “making selling easier” and explore what “getting rid of stuff” really means when you’re on a deadline and out of options.
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.
