Help users extend their smartphone’s lifespan
COMPANY
Back Market
ROLE
Product Design
INDUSTRY
Technology
YEAR
2024
SCOPE
Research, ideation and usability testing
Back Market is more than just a marketplace for refurbished phones. It's a mission:
♻️ To make choosing refurbished feel like no compromise — on performance, reliability, or style.
But despite a strong offering, one key question remained:
How can we help users take care of their phones to extend their lifespan?
📱 In France, people change phones every 20 months.
💧 It takes 1,000 liters of water to make one.
🌍 Doubling a phone's life has real impact for the planet.
Features that back market offers to help extend smartphone’s life.
🔋 Battery health : A battery check that gives users insights on its condition and offers DIY maintenance tips — including a tutorial from iFixit if the battery needs replacement.
🧪 Full diagnostic : A 7-step interactive phone test (covering sound, screen, sensors, etc.) that ends with a detailed report and a resale suggestion if needed.
💰 Resale : A quick 5-question form that evaluates the phone’s condition and gives users an instant buyback offer from a certified refurbisher.
Create an experience within the Back Market app that turns smartphone diagnostics into a key moment: a tipping point between repairing or reselling.
Guiding metrics:
📈 Increase device longevity
🔁 Encourage regular app usage
🔄 Promote circularity (fewer phones forgotten in drawers)
📊 Understanding the habits and uses of refurbished smartphones
Survey (30 participants)
64% struggle to maintain their phone
77% would keep it longer for financial reasons
67% search online as soon as an issue appears
Users are seeking help—but lack a clear tool to guide them.
We conducted 5 user tests on two app features:
🔋 Battery health
🧪 Full diagnostic
What we observed:
Vague wording (“take care of your phone”… huh?)
Low perceived value at the end of the diagnostic
No actionable recommendations
Users didn’t get the purpose of the diagnostic, and weren’t motivated to use it.
✨ Reframing problematic, benchmarking and emerging patterns
After our initial research, it became clear that the current features supporting smartphone maintenance lacked clarity, context, and user engagement. This led us to reframe the core challenge:
How might we encourage users to see and use the Back Market app as a go-to tool for maintaining their smartphone?
👨💻 By cross-analyzing our user research, competitor insights, and the existing app experience, four key opportunities crystallized. These became the foundation for our design direction:
Add contextual guidance — before, during, and after the diagnostic experience
Refine the UX writing — to make copy clearer, more actionable, and aligned with user intent
Educate users — subtly, but consistently, throughout the journey
Deliver value — make diagnostics feel meaningful, not just mechanical
These principles became our north star as we moved into ideation, sketching, and prototyping — guiding every decision toward a more useful, usable, and desirable maintenance experience.
🔧 A central maintenance hub
From the home screen, users access:
Full diagnostic
Battery health
Helpful tips (text & video formats)
📊 Reworked diagnostic results
Improved content hierarchy
Added educational explanations
Clear paths to sell or repair
“We didn’t want it to just be a test. We wanted it to be a gateway to action.”
👥 4 users — Men, 25–35 — environmentally aware, but never resold a phone before.
Key findings:
❌ Tips page underwhelming: too generic
❌ Lack of useful insights: “Okay, it’s broken. Now what?”
❌ Low motivation to start the diagnostic unprompted
Better understanding needs to optimise our solution
👉 Tips page removed
Replaced by a search bar to go straight to the point. Users can now actively seek the information they need, when they need.
🔄 Diagnostic & resale merged
Rather than treating the diagnostic and resale as two separate features, we combined them into a single, seamless journey. The diagnostic result screen now provides:
An estimated resale price based on the device’s current condition
An estimated repair cost, offering transparency and informed decision-making
A clear call to action: repair or resell — putting the user in control
This fusion not only simplifies the flow, but creates a smart, value-driven loop between maintenance and circular economy.
💡 Detailed, restructured results
To make the results more meaningful and digestible, we redesigned the results screen with a focus on clarity and actionability:
Failures are prioritized and highlighted so users see what matters most first
Results are now organized by functional theme (screen, battery, sensors, etc.)
Each issue is paired with contextual advice — short, actionable tips or tutorials that guide the next step
From static report to interactive guide — this shift makes diagnostics more engaging and educational.
✍️ Rewriting banners
Many users didn’t understand the purpose of the diagnostic upfront. We refined the in-app banners to clearly communicate the value of the tool:
“Run a diagnostic to see if you should repair or resell.”
Clear message. Compelling promise.
Scaling the vision
With a more intuitive and engaging maintenance flow in place, the next challenge is to amplify the impact of this ecosystem. How can we turn a helpful feature into a true user habit — and make Back Market a long-term ally in smartphone care?
To push this vision further, we identified two strategic moves:
🤝 Create a repair partner network
Integrate a trusted network of local or certified repair services directly within the app. After a diagnostic, users could instantly connect with the right professional — transforming a simple test into a seamless, real-world solution.
📲 Position Back Market as the go-to destination for smartphone maintenance
By unifying resale, repair, and education within a single, coherent experience, Back Market has the opportunity to own the post-purchase lifecycle — becoming the leading reference for sustainable smartphone usage in the refurbished market.
