Saltside
Product design, 2014 - 2017
I worked at Saltside for 3 years. As a part of the product team, I designed 2 new native apps (android & iOS), re-designed the web applications (desktop, smartphone, feature phone) and multiple new features on top of those.
Saltside’s mission is to build leading online marketplaces in underserved markets, currently in 4 around the world: Bangladesh, Ghana, Sri Lanka & Nigeria. These markets gives many interesting challenges: Low internet penetration, infrastructure & close to none digital banking systems to name a few.
Continuous iteration
Working with a product like this is all about getting better. In the images above you can see the history of the SERP (Search engine results page) on android. V1 was the first SERP we had live. However, we found that layout had many flaws. Longer titles would steal space from price, or vice versa. It wasn’t very dynamic or foolproof. V2 is the one we currently have live, combined with both Fluid & Landscape. V2 is more spacious, takes care of price and title, but also lets us add things to our ad-items, such as promoted ads, buy now, or if the user is a paying member.
Some categories, such as cars or property, are naturally displayed in a landscape picture(except for maybe skyscrapers). It’s also categories where you’ve most likely done some research as a buyer, so you have a grasp of what you want. We wanted to display these items more naturally, with more details (larger image, more metadata) visible directly from SERP, without going to the detailed view.
Other categories, such as sports, hobbies & clothing have multiple ways of being shown. It’s also one of these categories you might browse more for inspiration or purchasing on impulse. In these categories, the metadata isn’t as important; It’s the picture that sells. Images are displayed on a set of rules, such as min-height & max-height, so that the experience remains intact (and also not let our users go bananas with portrait panoramas that would take up an entire SERP).
Growing with a design system
Saltside has been growing rapidly over the years. To work with multiple platfroms, markets and languages can be tough. I’ve been setting up a design system to make life easier, both for our developers and designers. We’re working thinking of different elements as components, and how they should behave on all platforms. We were using Craft Library in Sketch to sync all components to the design team. Together, we review new or changed components before adding them to the library. The workflow made us work faster while still keeping the design language intact.
