RentalBuddy
A mobile application created to help young professionals find roommates and housing in a reliable and safe way
Role
UX/UI Designer
Tools
Figma, Figjam
Timeline
6 weeks
Industry
Real Estate,
Social Media
Problem
Young professionals struggle to find roommates and housing
Roughly 1/3 of young adults live with a roommate/live in a shared household. Finding a roommate and housing can be tricky, especially as young professionals move to a new city.
Goal
Design a product that helps young professionals find roommates and housing.
This product should help people connect with others that are looking for roommates, sublets, and leases in a convenient, trusted, and organized way. We want to help make moving less stressful for young professionals.
How might we…
1
Connect potential roommates based on their preferences and needs
2
Ensure safety when connecting people
3
Have people easily find sublets and leases for rent based on their preferences
Research
What are young professional’s issues with their current method of finding roommates?
I began by conducting user interviews with 5 participants via zoom ranging in age from 23-28 years old. I wanted to gain an in-depth understanding of users’ thoughts and experiences of how they look for roommates and their painpoints. I then compiled quotes and organized my data with an affinity diagram.
Goals for Research
Determine criteria for young professionals looking for a roommate and place to live
Understand what platforms people use for finding roommates; what they like and don’t like about them
Learn opportunities for helping young professionals move and find roommates
Key Findings
Young professionals value knowing their roommate or having common background/interests in order to decide to live with them: Messaging, video chatting, or meeting up with them
People use Apartments.com, Zillow, Roomies, Facebook, and Bumble BFF
They are discontent that current platforms are unreliable, disorganized, and lack safety and security measures
Competitive Analysis
Based on my user interviews, I needed to do a competitive analysis to get more information on the current methods users currently use to find roommates and housing
I identified 3 major opportunities based on this analysis:
Ability to see potential roommate’s social media
Filter options for preferences (for both roommates and housing)
Messaging and video chat feature
Other Considerations
Design a product that helps young professionals find roommates and housing.
It is important for me to not only consider the users when designing my website, but also take into consideration business goals and technical considerations. This includes thinking about maximizing revenue, adding security measures, and having a low maintenance website.
Ideation
Develop a product that helps find people meet others based on their criteria for a roommate, inspired by dating apps
I wanted to prioritize finding a roommate, as this was the most frustrating part for my users. Based on my interviews, I wanted users to have a similar experience to a dating app (finding people who fit your criteria and message to get to know each other). This basic premise would also be applied to finding a sublet also. I began creating low fidelity wireframes with 3 different options for each page to get feedback on from my mentor.
High Fidelity Wireframes & Prototyping
Based on feedback from my mentor on which designs he liked best, I began high fidelity wireframing
Creating a reliable, organized, and easy way for people to find roommates drove my decisions while creating high-fidelity wireframes. With this design, you can see potential roommates, send them messages, and see sublets.
User Testing
Before completing my design, I knew I needed user testing feedback on my design usability, functionality, and overall look and feel
I used Figma’s prototype setting and Zoom to run through my wireframes with my 5 participants, running through 3 different task flows (signup/create profile, filter roommates/match/message, filter place to live). I wanted to understand the ease of use of my website and the completion rate of my user flows, find pain points within the task flows, and assess users’ feelings toward the UI elements
Iteration #1
Adding more safety and security measures- ID Verification
2 participants were worried about catfishing and bots. In order to counteract this, I added a feature that you need to verify your identity with RentalBuddy by submitting some form of photo ID in order to continue the setup of your profile.
Added
Iteration #2
Changing the iconography for the profile and ‘matching’ section of the website
1 participant was confused about the process of matching with another person and why it is a heart icon. They thought the heart icon could signify saving the profile instead. I changed the cards/profile to have a check instead of a heart and added an x (to remove the profile from their list) and a save button for people to come back to later.
Iteration #3
Changing sublet info page to have roommate/subleaser information front and center
1 participant wanted to be able to see the person’s profile who is subletting their room out (along with their potential roommate) on the house/apartment listing itself once you click into it. I added a section at the bottom of the listing where users will be able to click into both the potential roommate and subletter’s profile.
Final Design
Introducing RentalBuddy- The all in one platform for roommate, sublet, and rental search
Based on my research and user feedback, safety, security and ease of use were all most important to me while designing.
Sign Up/ Login, ID Verification, and Personal Profile
With this ID verification during the sign up process, RentalBuddy is able to limit the number of bots and fake profiles on the site, creating a better and safer user experience. During this sign up process, set your preferences for finding roommates and rentals.
View Roommate Profiles, Match, and Message
People have the ability to look through potential roommates and send them a match request, if they think they would be a good fir. For safety, people can only message each other once they have matched with each other. Once matched, they can then message, and look for sublets or rental properties within this app.
Find Leases, Match with Sublets, and List Your Place
Scroll through the list of rentals and sublets that appear based on your set criteria. View roommate profiles for sublets and match with sublets, if you are interested in the place/roommate. You also have the ability to list your own place for rent or for sublease.
Retrospective
Creating a unique brand identity
Since the target users are young professionals, the visual design was meant to reflect a young and playful look.
Safety and security at the top of mind
Through user research and user testing, I found that security was one of the things that was lacking with the current platforms users were currently using. I knew I needed to add as many security features as possible to keep my users feeling safe on my application. I will take this lesson in cyber-safety to my future projects.