Homeseeker is an online portal/website where people can find safe, cost-effective housing, to their liking.
I managed all aspects of the project, from the initial user research and ideation to prototyping and user testing.
Duration: 1 month
Tools: Figma, Miro, Maze, Google Forms, Confluence
Responsibilities: User research, personas, sitemaps, wireframing, prototyping
Finding the perfect place to live can be daunting for most people. Whether you’re looking to rent a newly built apartment downtown or buy a small cottage house in the suburbs, searching for your dream home is often very difficult.
To alleviate some of this stress, the goal for this project was to create a website that allows individuals to search based on their needs, easily browse through listings, and ultimately seek their dream home.
I started the research process by analyzing data taken from user surveys. This helped me learn what struggles people face when searching for their ideal home and what some of their most common pain points are.
Here are some of the insights I gathered from my research:
of the survey participants wished the home-seeking process was less tedious and stressless
of the renters said that finding an apartment that fits their budget and needs is their biggest pain point
After coming up with a few insights based on user research, it was time to create personas. This helped in visualizing the target audience.
To guide me through the design process, I ensured this persona accurately portrayed an adult eager to find their dream home based on the parameters/needs they’ve established beforehand.
This persona was referred to throughout the entire product design life cycle to remain focused when making design decisions.
The next step in my design process was visualizing how the product would be structured. Because users tend to sit down and strategically plan where their next home will be, this led me to create a website rather than something like a mobile application, for example.
With this in mind, I shifted priority towards a desktop or laptop computer and created a sitemap that illustrates the main user flow of the product.
To begin the design stage, I started with a few rough sketches of the intended page layout. I wanted the user to search for listings based on their location, browse and filter between various parameters, and add listings to their favorites. These features are reflected in the sketches shown below.
Now that the structure was established, it was time to create low-fidelity wireframes for the website. These wireframes were later converted to lo-fi prototypes to quickly get a sense of how each screen should flow together.
Before moving on to high-fidelity mockups, I tested the lo-fi prototype on five different participants in an unmoderated usability study. Here are some of the improvements made based on user feedback:
After receiving user feedback and iterating on the prototype, the final design was complete. Because the home-seeking process is often tedious for most people, the website was intended to be clean and streamlined to provide a stress-free experience for the user.
The final high-fidelity prototype can be tested below. Feel free to press F on your keyboard or click the maximize icon in the top right of the frame below to enter full-screen mode. You can also press R to reset the user flow.
With this project, I learned about some of the common struggles users face during the home-seeking process. Additionally, I also had the chance to design a digital product for a desktop device for the first time.
Although I’m fairly satisfied with the final outcome, here are a few things I wish I did differently throughout the design process:
What would a mobile application look like? This product focuses on a desktop website experience. It would be interesting to see what a dedicated mobile application would look like with the same goals in mind.
What can be improved with the design? UX design is an ongoing process. The next steps include continuing usability testing and constant iteration.
