Encouraging Seattle exploration through curated light rail zines
Role
UX Researcher
Illustrator
Team
4 Designers
Timeframe
Jan – March 2026
8 weeks
Tools
Adobe Illustrator
Figma
Procreate
Overview
Bridging the Seattle freeze
Off-Rail is a design solution that transforms the "logistical tax" of commuting into an opportunity for social discovery. By activating Seattle light rail stations with neighborhood-specific zines, the project encourages those in Seattle to break the "Seattle Freeze" and build deeper connections with the city’s informal gathering spots.
The Problem
The logistics of isolation
In Seattle, the "logistical tax" of transit, cost, and energy has shifted face-to-face interaction from a daily habit to a high-pressure planned event. For 20–30-year-old workers, an overload of variables often induces decision paralysis, making social isolation the "easier" choice over high-pressure social situations. We set out to find how design could bridge this gap between just "existing" in a space and building intentional community.
Target User
Introducing Sarah—a Gen Z fashion enthusiast
Throughout the process, I consulted with Treffa's first user to determine the pain points of Treffa's target users. I created a user persona to help guide my features for Treffa and my design.
The Solution
Capsules—build personal styles and connect with others.
Treffa needed a way to turn the fleeting moments of fashion discovery and inspiration into something lasting, visual, and social.
Capsules are built for fashion discovery and curation. Every item inside is tied to a real recommendation or bounty, so users can track its source, context, and follow up with the person who posted it.
Onboarding
Onboarding allows Treffa users to create a capsule and save initial suggested recommendations, driving more users to Treffa's two-sided marketplace.
Add clothing items you see to capsules
This feature allows users to save either images from requests or recommendations to their capsule, creating an ecosystem around recommendations, requests, and capsules.
Follow other capsules or invite collaborators
Users can follow other capsules, get inspiration from them, and co-create capsules, bringing fashion lovers together. Capsules that the user follows are also used to curate the user's main feed, providing them more relevant posts.
Turn your capsule into a bounty
Gen Z audience doesn't just buy a standalone piece of clothing, they shop to fulfill a specific vibe or aesthetic. Being able to attach a capsule to a bounty/request turns shopping collaborative and a hunt to find the item that will match the user's capsule/style.
Learnings and Takeaways
What I Learned
Navigating ambiguity and a lack of structure and process, especially for my first design project. I was given a high-level brief to create an organizational tool, and I had to do a lot of outside research on how to use Figma.
Technical constraints were important to consider. I proposed a few different features for capsules that I thought could be fun and unique, but they would be too technically difficult to implement for the one developer staffed on Treffa.
If I were to redo this project, I'd focus on recruiting more users for user research to gain more comprehensive insights, conducting usability tests throughout my design process, and overall utilizing what I've learned in the past year about the design process. I focused primarily on benchmarking UI patterns from similar apps, namely Pinterest and Poshmark.
