Kpop Trading Card Application
Personal Project | UX/UI Design
This app was born out of personal frustration. Photocard trading — the exchange of business-card-sized images of K-pop group members found randomly inside albums — happens almost entirely on social media platforms like Instagram and Twitter, where users rely on hashtags to find trades. It's a creative workaround, but it's not a solution. I saw an untapped market with no dedicated product and decided to build one.
Methods & Skills
Market Research · Competitive Analysis · Exploratory Research · Architecture Diagram · Wireframing · Prototyping · UI Design · Accessibility · Figma
Foundation
The app's core focus is facilitating the exchange and sale of photocards, alongside giving users a clean way to catalog their collections. To keep the scope manageable and the launch focused, I made a strategic decision to start with one group — BTS — the most popular K-pop group globally. The goal was to build something with enough traction to expand into other groups over time.
The app needed three things: a space to add, edit, and view a catalog; a section to specify photocards available for trade or sale; and a place to browse other users' photocards using filters.
UI Design
22 high-fidelity wireframes were created in both light and dark mode — a deliberate accessibility choice that also reflects how collectors use their devices in different environments. Every screen was designed with the collector's workflow in mind, keeping interactions intuitive and the visual design clean enough to let the cards themselves shine.
Structure and Prototype
Given the straightforward nature of the app I kept navigation simple — a bottom nav with four buttons: Home, Collections, Trade, and Profile. No unnecessary complexity. The two primary flows, Adding to Collection and Adding a Trade Filter, represent the core of the experience and were the focus of the prototype.
What's Next
A prototype is ready and waiting for the next phase — user testing with real collectors. From there I'd validate the trading flow, explore community features, and consider expanding beyond BTS to a broader range of K-pop groups.