Founded in 2018, the platform emerged to facilitate safe and simple product exchange. Inspired by personal experiences, they decided to create a space where users could exchange goods, skills, or money. With rapid growth, Dondo has gone from 10,000 to 130,000 users and from 5 to 25 employees. The platform has attracted investments from prominent figures like Eric Yuan from Zoom and Jerry Yang from Yahoo, driving its expansion into other Latin American markets.
Leading the design team and directing research efforts to increase the number of active users on the platform by enable them to achieve their goals effectively, efficiently, and satisfactorily.
My vision for the design team was to democratize participation spaces so that any member of the company could propose new features based on observations from their own role. Upon receiving this information, the design team performs the following tasks:
Understanding user problems through direct research.
Assisting the strategy team in defining the most important problems according to the OKRs.
Brainstorm simple experiments according to the company's current strategy.
Collaboratively prototyping with other members of Dondo.
Testing with users, analyzing the success metrics of a feature.
Iterate until get results.
Some prototypes of new functionalities created by the team during workshops.
We collect three key pieces of information: phone number, address, and interests of each Dondo user. This way, we can offer an experience where items are relevant, closer to each individual, and it's possible to contact each party if necessary.
Items can be navigated by popularity, interests, categories, exchange intent, proximity, and item status. Additionally, it's possible to view the feed with both large and small cards or navigate among items that have videos through the Videos feature.
For each of them, we include the tentative value set by the owner and their intention, whether it's for barter or sale. Within the details of an item, the owner can write what they want in exchange for their item.
Dondo allows parties to negotiate within the platform through private chats and public discussions on items. Subsequently, we enable the possibility of sending offers with one's own items to those found in the marketplace. If there is an agreement, an exchange occurs, and the platform prompts the parties to complete a series of steps to verify that both received the exchanged item. At the end of the transaction, each party can rate the other.
