top of page
Catawiki - Seller Approach
Course
Design Project 2
Date
February 2023
Students
Ember Peters
Ilia Dichev
Jochem Verstegen
Extra Material
What to online auctions and AI have in common? Nothing, yet, but in this project we attempted to change this!
In Project 2 Design, executed in the Artifice squad, our team was asked to work on a challenge posed by Catawiki, a company known to be the most-visited curated marketplace in Europe for special objects. This firm is hosting weekly auctions within an online platform for buying and selling special items and collectibles.
In accordance with the mission of the squad of our choice, we were expected to provide an alternative or additional AI experience within the website of Catawiki. But what is artificial intelligence and what could it add to a marketplace? The complex and official definition says it is a wide-ranging branch of computer science concerned with building smart machines capable of performing tasks that typically require human intelligence. It is easier, however, to understand it by using examples such as self-driving cars, Siri, Alexa and so on. In e-commerce, AI solutions collect vast amounts of data about customers and items and combine it to enhance customer experience. Unique features that may be encountered often are image- based search, voice search or chatbots.
We were offered the option of either taking the buyer or seller experience, and it was up to our team to decide which one to pursue. It was the anticipation of a challenging and more educational road that prompted our decision to take on the challenge about the seller experience. We were motivated during the whole project, because we strive to deliver something to Catawiki that can be useful to them. We don’t want to make something easy by doing too little, but also don’t want to make something unrealistic. This can be achieved by making good use of the client meetings, sharing our current work and ideas and actively listening to and implementing the client’s feedback.
Throughout the semester, our goal was to incorporate AI in the form of image-recognition and auto-filling feature into the auction submission flow. Using the tool of Teachable Machine and an auto-filling feature that was created in a Wizard of Oz manner in our prototype, we display how we attempted to speed up the completion of object submissions and boost the satisfaction of visitors.
Throughout this project, a reflective transformative design process was followed, which is a more open and dynamic design process compared to classical design processes. By continuously reflecting critically on the choices made, with our vision in mind, we ensured that the final product contained well-considered design choices. In this report, we will elaborate on all our decisions, which eventually led to our final result.
bottom of page