Product Strategy
UX/UI
DESIGN + CODE
SHIPPED

SG Booths — Singapore Makers' Market Hub

Designed and built mobile app for artists to track upcoming makers' markets, with 300+ App Store users.

Team

Solo

RoLE

Product Designer & Software Engineer

TIMELINE

Jun 2022 - Sep 2022 (4 months)

SKILLS/TOOLS

Mobile App Design, Figma

CONTEXT

SG Booths is a cross-platform mobile app allowing both makers and visitors to keep track of upcoming art & crafts/makers' market events in Singapore. I designed and developed this independently, releasing SG Booths to the App Store and garnering over 200 downloads in the first week.

A sneak peek of the final designs…

THE MOTIVATION BEHIND SG BOOTHs

Planning for upcoming makers' markets is challenging.

In the Singaporean small business scene, "makers" often "booth", or sell their wares, at makers' markets that happen across the island every month. I went to high school in Singapore and was running my own business selling self-designed stickers — so as a result, I was a regular attendee to these events as both a maker as well as a visitor shopping for cute stationery items.

However, in both roles, I faced problems.

as a MAKER:

  • It was almost impossible to find out what events were coming up to register for in time

  • I wanted to find other like-minded makers to booth together with

  • I had no easy way to share my catalog with visitors

  • My social media followers didn't always see my posts about the events I'd be at

as a visitor:

  • I never knew what events were coming up or when my favorite makers were boothing

  • I didn't know about any events that my favorite makers weren't attending

  • It was difficult to find out which makers would be attending each event

  • I would rarely discover new makers to follow

user research

How do other people in the maker scene feel about this problem?

After speaking to several other small businesses and sticker-shopping enthusiasts, I was able to create a summary of some insights.

Based on these, I then identified three key pain points that seemed to be shared across all the people I talked to about this problem.

PROBLEM STATEMENT

How might we allow makers and their customers to view the details of and be notified of upcoming art markets?

USER PERSONAS

From these insights, I created 2 user personas to help me better tackle this problem.

COMPETITOR analysis

What's already out there?

There is only one direct competitor to SG Booths: Eventbrite. Although Eventbrite is rarely used for makers' markets, I analyzed the product briefly, alongside indirect competitors Instagram and Discord which are used as communication channels to disseminate similar information.

Discovery

Crazy 8's.

In ideating for this product, I went all-out with different ideas in the Crazy 8's exercise. I came up with a typical list style display of events, a map-based view of events, a Pinterest style board to scroll through, and even a dating app-inspired method of discovering new makers and their upcoming booths.

A friendly, homegrown platform for keeping track of makers' markets.

Visitors are able to plan their next makers' market event to go to and even discover new makers along the way, while makers can not only find events to booth at but also post catalogs and attract new customers.

LOGIN FLOW

Creators and visitors have a different flow.

Creators are prompted to enter their Instagram usernames and upload product photos, while visitors can simply sign up and proceed to the home page.

EVENTS + VENDORS FLOW

Browse events + makers and see their details.

Browse events by month and explore the list of makers there or mark yourself as boothing if you are a maker who will be at the event. Alternatively, keep up with your favorite makers and check out what events they're planning on boothing at.

DESIGN CRITIQUE

Analyzing past design work

These designs were created in 2022, and I jumped straight to high-fis instead of doing any iterating beforehand! Now, I would go through the design process much differently.

what i could've done better

  • User flow is not intuitive — should've iterated first!

  • Many elements are not aligned properly

  • Elements on event page are cluttered

  • Touch target size is too small

what i did well!

  • Maintained a clear color scheme

  • Information hierarchy of most screens makes sense

  • Made a working Figma component!

  • Good attempt at prototyping

REFLECTION

My first-ever UI/UX design experience.

Although there are many things I could have improved in designing SG Booths (most important being actually ideating and creating different iterations instead of just moving to the final product), I am very proud of how well I did considering it was my very first time trying UI/UX design! I can also see how far I've come since then.

Never be scared to try.

If I hadn't tried to design and build this app, I might never have delved into the world of product design. Even though I had no previous UI/UX or Figma experience, I still did my best and tried to learn and do as much as I possibly could — a choice that I am very grateful for now.

Working on a passion project brings the most joy.

Despite having to learn a lot of new concepts for the first time in both design and dev, I had so much fun building this app. It's not perfect by any means, but it felt so fulfilling being able to work on a solution to a problem so close to my heart and so full of opportunity.

Design is not just visual.

When I designed this app, the vast majority of the design choices I made were solely based on what I thought would look most visually appealing. Now, I know that design is so much more than that — it's about meeting user needs and providing a smooth and intuitive experience for the user.

if i had more time to come back to this…

Revamping the design of SG Booths.

If I had the opportunity to work on this again (which I truly hope will happen!), I would make sure to ideate and iterate from a fresh slate without being overly focused on the current premise and structure of the app.

Since this is a solution involving so many logistical questions and stakeholders (e.g. who was meant to have been the one manually creating each event? I would have had to reach out to Singaporean event organizers in order to coordinate this.), I would definitely go back to the drawing board regarding user flow and the whole approach taken in solving this problem.

Overall, I'm confident that I would be able to improve on my previous mistakes and deliver an even better product!