Designers
Designers
Designers
First TikTok Shop Purchase?
Designing a trust and protection system for TikTok Shop’s first-time U.S. buyers.
Key Words
Designers
Yicheng Wu
SUMMARY
This project investigates why U.S. users, who spend nearly an hour a day on TikTok, still hesitate to place their first TikTok Shop order. Through market research, expert interviews and peer interviews, I mapped the last 10–20 seconds of the purchase journey and found a trust gap, not a demand gap. I then designed and prototyped a three-tier Trust & Protection System that lives inside the TikTok interface, showing risk and guarantees in under two seconds to nudge first-time purchases.
challenge
Stakeholders across this ecosystem users, brands, and TikTok face different forms of risk. Users like the products but don’t trust the transaction, worrying about fakes, refunds and “who is responsible” if something goes wrong. Brands struggle to build credibility on a social platform they don’t fully control, while TikTok must balance fast growth with fraud, refund abuse and reputational risk. The challenge was to make these invisible risks and motivations legible at the exact moment of purchase.
Outcome
The project culminated in a coded interactive prototype that recreates a TikTok For You Page and product page with a three-tier trust badge system. Blue badges signal official brands, green badges verified high-score sellers, and orange badges high-risk or new sellers backed by stronger buyer protection and stricter platform controls. By surfacing clear guarantees next to the “Buy” button, the prototype directly targets first-time hesitation and gives TikTok and brands a concrete policy and UX lever to test.
MEET THE Designers:
Yicheng Wu