Housing Buddy

Role: Product designer, prototyping, branding

Timeline: 10 weeks (Jan - Mar 2023)

Team: PM - Kaustubh Sonawane, DEV - Emerald Zhang, Conny Cai

Tools: Figma, FigJam, Adobe Illustrator

Facilitating the process of apartment hunting for college students.

PROJECT OVERVIEW

A website solution that allows users to filter, review, and compare apartments to make more informed decisions on where to stay.

In Spring 2023, I worked with the Texas Product Engineering Org to launch a website developing an integrated website featuring information and reviews about apartments near UT Austin. As the sole designer, I led the branding aspects and executed a comprehensive design in 10 weeks.

Housing Buddy is a website that helps students efficiently write a review, obtain data on a variety of housing options, and compare the residential situations of multiple apartments.

PROBLEM

Background

Finding housing near campus that is both the best fit and affordable for
college students can be a significant source of anxiety. Recent data highlights
this, revealing that over 60% struggle to identify satisfactory off-campus accommodations, amplifying their stress and financial pressures.

PROBLEM STATEMENT

How might we centralize and simplify the current housing search system to reduce stress on college students?

Project Goals

1. Understand the needs and pain points of college students looking for housing

2. Design a solution that aims to find ideal apartments based on the user’s needs

FINAL SOLUTION PREVIEW

Filter

The home page features a simple and minimal filter bar design for improved
usability to efficiently allow users to search for preferences and access results quicker.

What processes led to this solution?

What led to this solution?

Review

Users can find and sort past resident experiences to narrow down reviews based
on relevant criteria to help minimize bias decisions and time spent on reading.

Compare

The comparison tool allows users to quickly scan through and directly compare apartment metrics side-by-side in order to make a comprehensive decision.

RESEARCH SUMMARY

Competitive Audit

To get a feel of what already exists in the industry, I analyzed 3 of the most used resources catering to the UT student housing space.

As a result, I found that there is no current centralized system that allows students to easily search by categories, compare listings, or read reviews.

User Interviews:
Unlocking Insights, One Conversation at a Time

Questions revolved around:

  • Current source of housing information

  • How feasible it was to find an apartment and its reliability

  • Challenges of the apartment hunting process

  • Considerations about where to stay

Current User Process

I mapped out recurring actions students were taking and was able to see where the speedbumps and frustrations were.

After 15 user interviews and 25 surveys with undergraduate students at UT Austin, I did a deeper analysis of their apartment search process to narrow down key issues.

The interviews and surveys suggested a few main issues:

Based on observations, insights on having a seamless search process include:

Biggest Design Opportunity ✨

How might we create a centralized system that offers a straightforward and convenient apartment search process?

IDEATION

After going through the original project brief again and converting my insights into design opportunities, I concluded that optimizing the housing search was an incentive for efficiency and building trust. Our solution was Housing Buddy, a website that would help students:

Sketches: The Wireframing Blueprint

My initial sketches of Housing Buddy involved figuring out how to make the filter bar interact with the website layout most efficiently and how to add all the information needed without too much scrolling.

User Flow: Making Every Path Golden

While creating the user flow, I was able to find some paths that were not as intuitive for the user. For example, now I included a pop-up that tells users to sign-in or sign-up before writing a review or viewing specific room listings.

DESIGN SYSTEM

Housing Buddy’s style guide features warm orange tones to create a more friendly, guiding experience and add an instinctive sense of trust by being on brand with the university’s colors. The use of text and imagery in the UI is made to be easily scannable, informative, and functional to meet the target audience's needs.

FINAL SOLUTION + HIFI DESIGNS

Facilitating the process of apartment hunting for college students.

1. Minimal home page design and layout

2. User authentication: sign up and sign in

3. Review page with categorical tags

4. Individual apartment pages

The separate apartment pages lead users to the floor plans, room details, pricing, and reviews.
This all-inclusive view increases more informed choices by the users and reduces any misunderstandings.

A cluttered interface can be overwhelming and confusing for users so having the main focus be
the filter bar and map can improve clarity and convenience for users.

Having a sign in system allows users to be able to verify and access their account
information including favorited listings or past reviews.

This page features reviews and ratings from past residents to minimize bias. Filtering reviews through
tags most relevant to the users offers them more control and allows them to skip the scrolling.

This feature allows for a direct side-by-side comparison to facilitate decision-making and
decrease the time allotted towards manually comparing key metrics.

5. Easily compare favorited listings

TESTING & FEEDBACK

Usability Testing:
The Moment of Truth

User tasks:

  1. Use the filtering system to find an apartment on the home page

  2. Add a new review on any apartment

  3. Compare 2-3 different apartments using the comparison feature

To further improve Housing Buddy’s system, our team conducted 10 rounds of user testing with some of the original participants we interviewed earlier. As guidance, I gave students a set of tasks to complete, where I was able to see their process through the prototype and recorded their responses to be improved in my next steps.

DEFINING GOALS & SUCCESS METRICS

I tested the prototype flows on both students searching for an apartment for the first time and those who have already gone through the process individually and had them fill out surveys before and after interacting with Housing Buddy.

  • Students who were able to read through past experiences and ratings of other peers were able to make quicker decisions based on reliable sources.

  • All students who used Housing Buddy to search and familiarize themselves felt that they had better knowledge of the system and apartments at UT afterward.

  • Almost all students rated their mood to be more positive after using the website meaning that Housing Buddy serves as a tool that helps alleviate stress and pressure from the apartment-hunting process.

  • Most students find Housing Buddy helpful and enjoy the overall experience of being incentivized to return and use it to aid their apartment search process.

REFLECTION

What I learned

Next steps

This project helped me grow as a product designer since it was my first full-stack project working cross-functionally with a team of product managers and engineers, allowing us to create real-time impact. Additionally, as the sole designer working in the team, I had to learn how to take on multiple roles with limited time such as creating rapid iterations, conducting user tests, and branding the entire concept.

Challenges and
constraints

Due to the limited time frame of this project and the team of new developers with technical constraints, I had to adapt my design style for greater efficiency and clarity. This meant I had to make trade-offs and prioritize certain features over others to meet the deadline. This collaboration not only enhanced the precision of my designs but also fostered a mutual understanding, streamlining our collective workflow.

Integration of ai

To increase user success rates, I would integrate an ai matching system that finds selections for students based on specific inputs such as square footage or number of windows. This way I can ensure that students can find the best match to their needs while minimizing the manual work and keeping the filtering choices concise.