Defining a student Resource-Sharing community hub

In this project, our aim is to design a community platform for international students in Sydney to share second-hand resources. This platform is not merely a marketplace for buying and selling second-hand items; rather, it seeks to establish a community hub where students can discover resources, share items, post requests and connect with one another, addressing the genuine needs they face when moving in, moving out and adapting to life in the local area.

For many international students, the initial period after arriving in Sydney is often fraught with practical challenges. For instance, they may need to find bedding, furniture, kitchenware, electrical appliances, study materials or storage items at short notice, and many will prioritise second-hand items due to limited budgets. At the same time, international students may be unfamiliar with the local area, the neighbourhoods around their campuses and collection methods. Therefore, the core requirement of this platform is not merely to ‘find goods’, but to help students locate suitable items within a trustworthy environment where items are shared amongst the student community, with collection points located near their university or home.

Based on this understanding, we have divided the platform’s functional requirements into two main areas. The first is for users seeking a single item. If a user has a specific goal in mind—such as a particular piece of furniture, an appliance, or course materials—they should be able to quickly search, filter and view specific listings via ‘Browse Listings’. This process requires support for filters such as category, campus location, price, condition and collection method, enabling users to find suitable items more efficiently. The second direction supports more community-oriented posting of requests. Many students do not simply need a single item; they may wish to purchase multiple items at once to furnish their room, or sell several items in one go before moving house. Therefore, we have designed the concept of a Community Board, allowing users to post messages such as ‘Looking to buy multiple items’, ‘Moving out clearance’, ‘Free to a good home’ or ‘Bulk sale’. This feature aligns more closely with the real-life scenarios of international students than a standard product listing. It also better meets the requirement of a ‘community hub’ where ‘members share important information and experiences’, whilst maintaining technical feasibility and ensuring the project meets BlaBla Corp’s expectations for a community hub.

After discussing the main features, we began to refine the core and optional functions. Core features include: homepage guidance, the community section, single-item browsing, product detail pages, posting items, and contacting sellers. These functionalities support the basic user journey from discovering resources to evaluating them, and finally contacting the seller. In contrast, more detailed features such as actual payment processing and a comprehensive order system, whilst valuable, are not our current priority as they would shift the platform’s focus towards a commercial e-commerce model and introduce additional privacy and liability concerns.

This process of defining requirements has made me realise that a good web application should not merely be a stack of features, but should prioritise functions based on the user’s actual circumstances. For our project, the common need among international students is not simply ‘buying and selling things’, but rather reducing the cost of living in an unfamiliar city through resources shared by fellow students, whilst establishing more convenient and trustworthy local connections.