Product Guide: User
The "user guide" portion should describe what the system does and how to get it to do what it does -- relatively simple installation instructions, and the features content typical of a non-technical user's manual.
TigerTrade is a delightful and pleasant way to buy from and sell to members of the Princeton community, as a successor to the current TigerTrade app. Our application improves upon the old system in a number of ways:
Semantic Search: Currently, TigerTrade searches for exact word matches in listings, so searching "bicycle", for example, will not match "bike". Our application not only enables this kind of searching, but also does a fuzzy searching, so "cycle" will also match "bicycle". This casts a wider net so that you are more likely to find items that matter to you.
Search Watching: If the item you're searching for is not found, quickly create an alert to notify you as soon as a matching listing appears.
Image Upload: Images are a first-class part of TigerTrade. Users can upload up to 10 images, which are displayed elegantly with their listing. This allows fashion items and other highly-visual items to be given appropriate visual, as well as texual description.
Users can simply navigate to tigertra.de to start using TigerTrade. Many features will require a login, which can be accessed after clicking the login button and signing in through CAS.
When a user first visits TigerTrade, they are presented with the listings view. In this view, users will be able to search, sort, view, and act on listings presented to them.
- Search Bar: TigerTrade will intelligently search for any listings in the app that match the user's query.
- Filter Bar: The filter bar allows the user to further filter their query and modify their view of the listings. We further discuss the filter bar below.
- Listing Photos: All photos are displayed as a horizontal gallery. Users can click on the photos to view larger versions of the thumbnails.
- Listing Actions: Any actions the user may wish to take on an action are displayed here. The permalink button is for users who wish to copy a link to the individual listing to share with others.
- Listing Creation:The user can create a listing by clicking the Floating Action Button on the bottom right. This opens a compose window, as described below.
In the expanded view of the filter bar, users can further parametrize their queries, setting whether to:
- Show only favorited posts
- Bounds on creation dates for displayed posts
- Minimum and maximum prices
- Include already-sold listings in results
Users can additionally sort the results by:
- Most Recently Created
- Oldest
- Cheapest
- Most Expensive
- Soonest Expiration
- Furthest Expiration
Users receive slightly different information and options when viewing their own posts.
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My Listings vs Recent Listings: The navigation menu allows for users to choose between viewing only their own posts or viewing all users' posts.
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Actions: Instead of having the option to Contact Seller, users can Edit, Delete, or Mark as Sold their own listings.
The Compose window allows the user to compose a new post or edit an existing one. The expiration date is automatically set to be one year from the current date, but the user can change that. The Compose window can be closed by clicking the "X" or minimized by clicking the top bar of the overlay.
This view allows users to create and interact with requests to buy items. For example, if a user cannot find any bicycles in the system, they can create a buy request for bicycles and have sellers contact them. Users can also automatically "watch" their buy request, which creates a watched search from the title of their buy request.
This portion functions very similarly to the listings workflow, so we will omit a more detailed walkthrough.
When users click "Watch this Search" while searching for listings, the search is saved in Watched Searches. From this view, users can view the currently-active listings that match their search, stop watching the searches, and toggle whether they wish to receive email notifications on new matches for a given watched search. While our listing search results make a "fuzzy search" that allows for matches on parts of words, email notifications will be sent only if a full-word match is found between the search query and the title and body of a new listing.