A Move Planning Solution for the Circular Economy

Moving is a significant source of waste and expense in the United States. Households use over 900 million boxes annually, with most ending up in landfills. The average move costs between $1,500-$4,000, creating a financial burden for many.

Box Swap aims to address this by creating a circular economy for moving supplies, reducing waste and costs while fostering community connections.

This project started with a broad, open-ended research prompt: "How might we build a product to assist users in the process of moving?". I approached the problem as a startup founder seeking to distill this high-level question into a lean product that could be quickly tested and iterated upon.

As the sole creator on the project, I took on multiple roles: researcher, designer, and entrepreneur. I completed the project independently, with weekly feedback sessions from a design mentor who was a UX professional.

Before narrowing my focus on a solution, I gathered qualitative research through open-ended interviews with potential users. I recruited five participants ages 19-38 and asked structured questions to learn about their moving process, attitudes and emotions, and primary challenges in their own words.

After a 40-60 minute conversation with each participant, I used affinity mapping to uncover patterns in the responses and distill them into key themes.

To add context to my interview responses, I gathered secondary research on moving statistics in the U.S. Here I found data about the amounts of waste generated by moving, costs of the average move, and demographics of the most frequent movers. Whether due to high housing costs or remote work opportunities, younger adults in the U.S. experience the most frequent moves, and need flexibility, affordability, and mobility in their living situations. The fact that renters move more commonly than owners indicated budget-conscious needs. And the metric that moving rates overall in the US were trending downwards highlighted another risk: ensuring that a moving product was specialized to actual needs, and differentiated in the market.

To further understand market fit, I built a competitive SWOT and feature analysis of three competitor moving apps: moved., MoveAdvisor, and Sortly. Each was feature-rich and highly personalized, but built for people with time and money to spare. None offered any form of price or value tracking, and Sortly's paid tiers ran up to $71/month. None of them served the range of movers I'd interviewed, who wanted sustainable, low-effort solutions more than an expensive, high-touch service.

Pulling from interview data, with this gap in mind, I developed three personas spanning different moving situations: a first-time mover working with a tight budget and unfamiliar with the process, a nomadic creative subletting month to month who wants sustainable systems that travel with her, and an established renter willing to spend more to avoid hassle and protect belongings built up over years.

I brainstormed a feature list geared towards these personas that included vendor recommendations, bin suggestions, a community store, free box exchange, sustainable moving tips, social posts for plants, and even a Tetris-like packing game to retain users between moves.

I then storyboarded two of my personas in context to trace the emotional arc I sought to facilitate by solving their biggest pain points and stressors. Leaning into the "Learning Over Time" and estimation research themes, I considered how mobile features could reduce the unknowns of cost and time by visualizing predictions and making personalized guides against a calendar/timeline and budget.

From there, I mapped user flows of a feature set that leveraged an onboarding quiz to provide personalized recommendations for budget, timeline, and packing supply inventories that could be tracked and updated throughout a user's moving experience. This included a "free boxes" exchange for users who wanted to find free boxes and moving supplies as their catalyst for downloading the app.

I used the discrete steps of my user flows to sketch paper prototype wireframes of the screens at each interaction step. The screens were dense and detailed to account for the precision of the inventories and line items that moving and packing inherently require.

Evaluating these wireframes/sketches/prototypes, I wasn't satisfied that I was designing a tool that would actually help my identified users.

Basically, a personalization tool based on aggregate user data collected over time would only work well if there were a significant repository of user data to pull from. So, how could I attract users in the first place, and how could I create an appealing user experience that cut through the noise of the moving dilemma while promising more control, cost-savings, and joy?

One insight from user interviews kept ringing in my ears: Free Boxes. Every interviewee began their moving process by looking for free boxes and containers in their home or community. People say "free boxes" and you know exactly what they mean. The cardboard box is a universal symbol of moving.

I was also intrigued by how my interview respondents highlighted sustainability and community. My research on moving waste reinforced the opportunity: a supply exchange could simultaneously reduce costs, minimize landfill waste, and strengthen community connections.

The simplicity of this direction would allow for a faster launch, helping build a user base the product could grow with over time. It provided a unique value proposition rooted in both real user needs and the capacity for larger positive societal impact.

From this product definition, I developed a component library and two color palette options tested against WCAG AA/AAA contrast standards to guide the development of high-fidelity prototypes.

I conducted moderated usability tests with 5 participants, focusing on two key task flows: picking up boxes and listing boxes. The results confirmed the design's core usability while surfacing specific opportunities for improvement.

I plotted the user feedback on a grid and categorized it into "Worked", "Changed", "Questions", and "Ideas". Then, mapped potential solutions on an Impact vs. Effort matrix, prioritizing quick wins like avatars on swap listings and reducing drab colors in the UI.

I used these findings to implement quick wins in updated screen designs that addressed the most pressing usability issues.

The research for Box Swap surfaced a genuine unmet need for affordable, sustainable, community-based moving supplies. As an early-stage concept, the product would benefit from additional concept testing, market research and competitor research of sharing/circular economy apps, and a visual rebrand to feel more fun and dynamic.

Beyond utility as a free-standing consumer app, Box Swap could become a feature within an established moving and storage company like U-Haul, to incorporate reuse into their business model. It could also be used as a research vehicle to study behavioral data about community sharing patterns and local exchange.

For immediate next research and testing steps, I would prioritize:

• Contextual inquiry with users mid-move to evaluate how the interface holds up under real conditions of stress and distraction
• Paired usability testing of the exchange flow between a giver and receiver to surface coordination friction
• Deeper competitor research in the circular economy and sharing app space to validate the product direction

Box Swap demonstrates how user research can uncover problems that are both individual and systemic, and lead toward solutions that address both.