Find Your Roommates — Case Study

Product Design Exercise:

Find Your Roommates

“Finding and keeping a good roommate, however, gets harder as more people crowd into cities. Most of the city dwellers tend to spend most of their twenties (Ages 20 to 30) living with roommates.”

Task: Design a mobile product experience that makes it safe to find an ideal roommate in a new city. Design the experience from the perspective of a person who is looking for a roommate as well as the one who is looking for an apartment. After finding the ideal roommate, what else can this product do to make the roommate experience better?

We are looking to find ways to solve those pain points.

Note: Suggested all technologies need to exist. Show thought process, workflow, wireframes, and any UI for any two screens. Prototype or interaction if possible.

Solution:

Research

While studying the existing approach that people have for dealing with the roommate and landlord experience, I got to know the pain points and what people are missing and how these issues can be resolved.

The research process includes surveys & user feedbacks as a very important factor but to expedite the process I managed to do my desk research and go through different websites and mobile apps to understand the user base.

Roomster and Nestaway helped me gather some information.
‘Roomi’ and ‘SpareRoom’ are good options but apparently not in India.

Left → Right: Roomster, Nestaway

Framework:

The Quadrants:

I used Pain Points, Needs/Goals, Assumption and Constraints to divide my quadrants.

User Pain Points:

• Fake images & listing with fake details
• Very limited filter to refine the best result
• No expense management system / Lack of rent-paying functionality
• Unauthorised/Unverified users
• Hard to find people you can trust
• Friend as a roommate often breaks the relationship
• Different life habits

Needs/Goals:

• Find someone that’s not your friend but can be trusted
• Find someone that has a similar lifestyle

Assumptions:

• People need a way to explore other people’s life habits
• People need a way to evaluate other people.

Constraints:

• Life habits are hard to observe at first

Ideation

Mind Map

Mind Map covering all the major points

User Persona

I conducted two interviews within the provided time and as it happens I created 2 user personas with the help of online resources. Below are two user types with different professions and age.

The First Persona created on Xtensio using the gathered information

The second Persona created on Xtensio using the gathered information

UX Flow

Below I mapped the overview and user journey flow considering the user personas and the problem statement.

Overview

App Flow

Designs

Low-Fidelity Wireframes

Below you can see the Low-fidelity wireframes I sketched on paper to ideate the whole user journey.

Low Fidelity Wireframes

High Fidelity Screens

Below are the screens that show the following:
Right from onboarding to a set of questions from which we derive what to show the user in the feed.
Then we have screens which show all the four tabs and what all is going to be covered in each one of them.

Initially, the user witnesses the onboarding process and then moves forward to sign up on the platform.

The last segment of onboarding to the screen which is for the user to Login/SignUp

Once the user signs up using any medium and provides us with basic details, we give them a specific set of questions to answer based on their choice of either looking for a room or a roommate, according to which we derive our results on the feed.

The first screen asks whether the user is looking for a room or roommate and based on which the transition in the next screen appears

Now, here in the first scenario, the user is looking for a roommate, so the user is given a set of questions which is related to the roommate experience.

As the user is looking for roommates the user provides basic details of the property that the user is offering

The user is then given a set of questions through which we will derive our results and show the user best results in the feed for roommates

Some basic questions to define the compatibility between the roommates

We conclude the questionnaire by asking the users about their interests and then their little bio

And in the second case where the user is looking for a room, the user is asked to enter a relevant location.

If the user is looking for rooms then we first take the location in which the user wants a room

Now, as per the second scenario, the user is looking for a room so they are given a set of questions which are related to creating a better experience for finding a room.

The user is then given a set of questions through which we will derive our results and show the user best results in the feed for rooms.

Some basic questions to decide the compatibility

We conclude the questionnaire by asking the users about their interests and a bio stating about themselves

After answering the basic questions the user is taken to the home screen where their feed is curated as per their answers.

Below we have different screens for users looking for roommates and users looking for rooms.

Left → Right: Roommate, Rooms, Detailed View of Room (Landing Screens)

We have different views of the profile depending on the viewer.

Left → Right: Profile View(Self), Profile View(Visitor)

Below we have screens captured for various tabs of the app

Left → Right: Messages, Interests(Room), Interests(Roommate)

Expanded view of certain screens

Left → Right: Detailed Room View, Profile View(Self), Profile View(Visitor)

Improve Experience

In order to improve further experience of users after getting a room or roommate, we should enable features that help them manage their common expenses with their roommates (expense management system).
We can also include a feature which helps them to pay the rent online and make it hassle-free (rent-paying functionality).

“It’s not enough that we build products that function, that are understandable and usable, we also need to build products that bring joy and excitement, pleasure and fun, and yes, beauty to people’s lives.”
– Don Norman

Conclusion

It was an interesting journey to design and work around the given exercise. Having to complete the exercise in a short span of time forced me to be extremely organised and efficient to meet the deadline. In this context, the research phase has been essential to identify user expectations and frustrations. Contrary to what I had thought, landlords are rarely involved in finding new tenants for their property. I also discovered how important communication is in the room search process, or in a roommate's daily life. Security and character compatibility are also major concerns.

This is the approach that I followed to complete the exercise within the deadline and the process was full of learnings.
One of the many things that I learnt was how to keep my target audience in the heart of the design process.

I did this assignment for a company’s interview process which consisted of seven rounds and I find myself lucky to have cleared all the rounds.

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