Project

Frenting is an online community for lending, borrowing, and sharing. Inspired by frequent tool sharing among neighbors, the service helps people keep track of the things they share with friends and find out what is available in their social network to borrow.

My Role

Chief Product Officer, User & Design Research, Design Strategy, Content Strategy, Web/UX Design, and Information Architecture, Visual Identity, Logo Design, Business Development

Process

Interview Extreme Lenders – To become immersed in the world of lending and borrowing, I interviewed people who are either heavily involved with lending or are part of a group that shares/lends/borrows frequently. A college librarian, a professional couple that created their own own online lending library, and an undergraduate university student managing a sports equipment lending program were some of the extreme lenders that I observed, interviewed, and collected qualitative data from.

Mapping the Movement of Things – From analyzing the lending processes of various situations, we started to map out how possessions are acquired and given away in the context of social relationships. A hierarchy for the quality of an item and a hierarchy for the closeness of a relationship emerged which helped to design the way and between whom online/offline transactions would occur.

Lifecycle of a Lending/Borrowing Experience – At the individual item level, we looked at the step-by-step process of lending and the needs that arise. These fundamental needs were translated into the functional flow of the user experience.

Outcome

The results of the research informed the UX design by elevating the importance of how items are tracked and maintained in the system to support the newly formed or existing social relationships. We partnered with the Stanford Green Living Council to use frenting to coordinate their annual Stanford undergraduate moveout, when outgoing students are offloading things for incoming students to inherit.