A mobile app enabling users to effortlessly search and book rooms and find potential roommates.
UX Research
Duration
Process
Role
UI Design
4 Weeks
UX Research, Wireframes, UI Design, Interaction Design, Prototyping, User Testing
As a UX/UI Designer, I conducted user interviews, performed competitive analysis, designed user interface, did prototyping and conducted usability testing using think-aloud sessions.
Overview
Staymate is a platform that makes the process of booking accommodation and finding an ideal roommate hassle-free for its users.
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Using the application, people can easily filter out their preferences and go through verified room listings and even choose roommates based on their preferred habits, lifestyle & personality.
Why did I choose this project :
Today, about 55% of the world's population resides in metropolitan areas, and many people especially millennials are moving to urban areas to pursue their careers and aspirations. So, there has been increased in demand for affordable housing i.e for a low cost of living.
So the convenient option is to accommodate in a shared place with a roommate or a flatmate. But finding a perfect roommate can be a daunting task for people, where in people end up spending too much time.
Having a similar experience while searching for accommodation during my graduation, motivated me to come up with some hassle-free and user-friendly solution that could help people find a suitable room/roommate for themselves easily.
Problem Statement
Many people are facing issues in finding a perfect room and roommate for themselves. The biggest struggle is to find people having similar interests and mindsets.
To date, many individuals try to find accommodation through traditional methods because they are sceptical about coming across fake accounts and listing them on online platforms. And for the roommates it's difficult to trust an unknown person initially without being aware of their basic lifestyle habits, hence they end up searching for a roommate among their common friends and known people.
All these traditional methods are extremely time-consuming and daunting for people with busy schedules.
Design Process:
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EMPATHIZE
User Research
Secondary Research
The increasing movement of the millennial population has given rise to the need for various types of rental accommodations in most Indian cities over time. Out of the available options for rental spaces, shared spaces such as paying guest (PG) accommodation and shared apartments are preferred among the youth.
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Affordability, proximity to the workplace/educational institution, surrounding amenities, the status of physical and social infrastructure, and security deposit and dealing with landlords who are still averse to rent out the apartments to bachelors are some of the few key factors that are considered by millennials while choosing their accommodation.
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For most people, the biggest bill they pay every month is their rent or mortgage, and many have even looked for secondary incomes as a way of keeping up with the exponential cost of housing. For some, there's another solution: Roommates.
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Not only do millennials tend to live with a roommate but also middle age people having low incomes prefer to share a home.
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Overall, according to a study people living with their friends, family (32%) and co-workers (over 30%) were the most likely to be happy with their roommates
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People living with an acquaintance were the least satisfied with their living situation
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Living with one other roommate who happens to be related to you is the most satisfying roommate situation
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Nearly 47% of people surveyed were friends with their roommates before moving in together, but only 32% were satisfied with the current living arrangement.
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But the roommate situation may not always be sunshine and rainbows. 41% of people identified keeping shared spaces clean as the top source of tension between roommates. The topic of cleanliness was highest among people living with friends (47%), followed by strangers (43%), acquaintances (42%) and family (32%). Paying rent (9%), communication (7%) and violating boundaries (7%) were the next biggest issues between roommates.
Primary Research
After doing my initial research, I got a gist of the target audience and the potential users of the market, along with common issues faced by them. But in order to get deeper understanding as well as empathize with the users about the problems and validate the ideas to design more meaningful solutions for them, I decided to conduct user interviews.
For this project, I have focused on 2 major groups
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People looking for accommodation (rooms or apartments)
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People looking for roommate
I came up with a set of questions after going through the problem statement couple of times and few brainstorming sessions. I conducted user interviews and survey with people who have different levels of experience with going through search process.
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Do you live in a shared apartment or a hostel?
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How is the experience living with a roommate?
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How do you look for a room/roommate?
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Is it difficult and time-consuming for you to find a perfect apartment and roommate?
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How do you find a roommate?
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What challenges do you face while living with a roommate?
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What do you look for in a roommate while finding one?
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How long does it take to find a roommate or room?
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Do you have any problem with lease agreements with landlords?
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Do you know any current roommate/room-finding apps?
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Would you like to use a new app?
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What features would you like to get using the new app?
Survey Insights
50% of people were in the age bracket of 18-25 years, 35% of people were in the age bracket of 25-30 years, 10% of people aged between 30-40 years, and only 5% of people aged above 40 years which is negligible. So our target audiences are people between 18-35 years of age.
90% of people find it difficult to search for an ideal room and roommate.
Most people look for a room/roommate through common friends, social media and FB groups, Broker and Family contacts.
Key Findings
Generally users look for rental accomodation because:
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Moving out for higher studies
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Shifting to a new place for a Job
Users look for housing to reside in:
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Alone
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Friends or with contacts from common friends & families to save up rental cost
Users expectations from the rental housing:
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Budget Friendly
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Nearby to their frequently visited places like office, college etc
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Peaceful locality with well connected and approachable communte services, grocery stores, food joints etc.
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Places having useful amenities like security, furnishing, air conditioner, elevator etc.
Issues with current home rental apps
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Pictures posted on the app are very deceiving. In reality, they look very different.
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Complex features make the user jouney confusing, which makes them leave halfway
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Users don't prefer sharing their contact details and address online for the fear of spam calls from property dealers and agent.
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Complex rent paying systems
Issues with current roommate searching apps
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Users are unable to gauge basic personality traits from the profile itself
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Detailed preference filters are not available eg; non smoker or drinker etc
Empathy Mapping
After conducting interviews, I created empathy maps considering 2 user groups, in order to deeply understand the reason behind certain actions that they take.
DEFINE
User Persona
Talking to people who have experience gave me reasonable apprehension of their needs & goals. I gathered valuable insights and started to narrow down the project. I created 2 distinct user personas:
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Roommate Seeker: representing users looking out for compatible roommates in pre-occupied apartments.
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Room Seeker: representing users looking out for safe accommodation with a smooth move-in process with the owner.
User Journey
After outlining users' goals and frustrations with respect to their experiences, I created User Journey Maps to figure out processes needed to achieve individual goals within the app. This allowed me to focus on possible critical pain points and address them in an effective way.
Competitive Analysis
Once I was certain of the new features I wanted to include, I began exploring ideas to figure out how to actually execute them.
I installed a few competitor apps. Few roommate booking and home rentals applications as well as hotel booking apps to understand their UI and UX. I wanted to make the booking procedure for a rented room as smooth as a hotel room booking. Conducting competitive analysis helped me add a few more insights to my research
Roomi
SpareRoom
Flatmate
Nestaway
Magicbricks
Airbnb
Some of the apps I chose for competitive analysis
Pain Points
Fake images and fake room listings
Difficult to find budget friendly room
Time taking procedures of rental agreements
Sparing out time to meet the owner is difficult in busy schedule
Tough to find someone having similar habits & living preferences
Hard to find trustworthy people
IDEATE
Brainstorming
After defining key pain points of the users, I started jotting down various thoughts and ideas that came up in my mind to bring forward possible solutions and features for the application.
Show nearby places in room details ( airport, grocery store, railway station etc)
Matches feature like tinder can be used
Review on rooms & Roommates
Show current roommates profile in room details
Give map view for easy viewing in a locality
Show group members common activity images
Give option to buddy up ( invite people and create group of roommates ) in app
Upload images with roommates for more credibility
Detailed filters: lease duration, shifting month, search radius, detailed locality for big city etc.
Report false listing ( show reviews on person’s
profile )
Small questionnaire, for users preferences on opening the application ( interests, profession, etc)
Well planned filters to easily find rooms based on the requirements
Online rent paying system
Map and location tracking system
Message and video calling feature
Indicate nearby important locations to familiarize to the new place initially
Indicate common activities through images of group members of a room
Possible Solutions
Main Features
Option for online house tour
Schedule assisted house visit through app
In-app rent payment facility & rental agreements
Post a new listing for any vacant house/ room
Invite / Review applicants to increase the credibility of a person
User Flow
Before ideating solutions, I created a basic user flow for the product to have a visual representation of the path a user can follow to achieve the goal.
User Flow: Ria finds a room
User Flow: Nishant finds a roommate
Information Architecture
Before starting to work on initial sketches of each feature, I visualized the Information Architecture of the app into a site map , based on the user flows.
DESIGN
Paper Sketches
Created many pen-paper sketches to connect the app’s information architecture to its visual design. Wireframing is crucial as it helps clarify consistent ways of displaying particular types of information on the interface. and also determines the intended functionality of the interface.
Wireframes
Style Guide
Colours
I have used blue, pink & white colours as I wanted to reflect the brand as warm, kind & concerned. Pink & white together portray love, protection & feeling of tenderness, while blue represents trust loyalty & stability.
Typography
SMALLEST
14pt
LARGEST
20pt
WEIGHTS
Regular, Medium, Semibold
Prototyping
TEST
Usability Test
Based on various feedback from other peers, I continually iterated my design over the span of 4 weeks - with 3 major improvements:
Before
1.
Removal of Secondary CTA at Bottom
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Based on the feedback, giving 2 CTAs at the bottom seemed to confuse the user with 2 different functionalities.
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Combining both functionalities into one CTA seemed to be a better fit. On clicking invite, the user would get a pop-up screen where they can customize their message before inviting a person.
After
2.
Seperate Screen for Rent Details
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Originally rent details were included in the same screen before additional features, but the option for selecting between a room & house under rent details created confusion amongst the users
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As per feedback, giving rent details on a separate screen appeared to be better because they are additional details once the user likes the place.
Before
After
Before
After
3.
Hiding the Reviewer’s Name
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Initially, I added the reviewer’s name along with their comment but in many users’ opinions, it was better to keep the user name anonymous.
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The reason is, usually even if the person might have some bad experience they would hesitate to write the actual review because their identity is visible to everybody.
Retrospection & Further Addition
Being the solo UI/UX designer for the project has had its challenges. There are many things that, I would have changed or added to enhance the user experience if time had not been a constraint.
I’ve gathered learnings from each stage of the process:
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In user interviews ask open-ended questions. Processing every bit of information is necessary.
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Distinguish between your personal beliefs and the results of user interviews and usability tests.
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As I've moved on to the final design, I've understood how time-consuming yet crucial high-fidelity prototyping is. The overall feel and identity of the app were greatly impacted by the addition of micro-interactions.
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Testing the prototype on actual users allows you to see how they interact with it and identify ways to make the user flow better.
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Adding a feature to group up with potential roommates on the app itself and find accommodation together.
