While looking for my own housing as a student, I was hunting for my third place to stay as a third-year in college. Each place I lived in previously did not fit my lifestyle and it became inconvenient for me, due to a lack of previous research. Unable to find a suitable place for myself for the past two years, I wondered if other college students had a similar issue as me.

I wanted to learn more about users who are beginners at moving and college students or young adults so that I can design a solution allowing them to find a new place that is tailored to their needs and wants.

First, I needed to test a few hypotheses:

College students and young adults struggled during the house-hunting process

User Research

Competitor Analysis

Analyze competitor strengths and weaknesses as well as determine how might users begin the first research phase of moving

Goal

Platforms

Niche

US News

Livability

Rentberry

• the majority of participants are dissatisfied with their current places and will move in the upcoming year

• many places were recommended by friends, revealing that there is a social aspect of moving that is usually disregarded

organizing notes from interviewees through…

Organizing all the information collected from each participant, 5 main themes began to form. These themes were then extrapolated again to further sort the notes into digestible information for more quantitative research.

What did we learn?

• Proximity to desired locations like grocery, entertainment, friends, etc. were ranked second behind price as the determining factor of moving

• All interviewees reported experiencing some type of stress during their moving process

• All interviewees live with or near their friends and consider this a perk in comparison to living alone

• There is a emotional and social aspect to moving in addition to normative functional aspects

…for content prioritization

Empathize in …

4 Participants

Hybrid Card Sort

40 cards

Objective

Determine how users would like features to be grouped together by sorting words with similarities together. As a method to evaluate the way people organize and categorize topics, results can be used to form the logic of an app.

finding pain points with…

Using a couple of constraints to get the gears moving…

I narrowed down the ideas to designing a personalization quiz feature, allowing users to answer lifestyle preference questions to gather information on potential areas to live in based on social and emotional factors, in addition to traditional functional factors.

How?

College students can cater their living style based on experiences they want to have at their stage of life. It allows users to filter housing searches to better fit their needs

Since college students and young adults are most likely living by themselves for the first time, users will be able to feel more at home. Even small factors can make large differences when it comes to living.

translating user needs with…

User Flows

collecting data with…

Thinking through user flows allowed me to understand the needs to be designed, built, tested, and validated. Sitting in the users shoes, pages and screens can be organized to translate the user’s needs and goals into steps inside the product.

Crafting a representative brand.

I began to define a brand system to represent and cater to college students. Using a color palette to invoke adventure for users and reliability of the brand, the overall look and feel of the product begin to emerge.

Selecting preferences.

Problem

Design a way for college students to craft their college experience by tailoring home listings for individuals.

With the ability to switch between functional and emotional filters using the “Home“ and “Lifestyle” toggle, users are able to search for the exact home they are looking for.

Based on preferences, favorites, and viewed listings, the “For you” page curates listings for a personalized touch. The more you use Rentsy, the more accurate and tailored the listings become.

Beginning the journey to find the perfect home, a simple, but skippable, ‘personalization quiz’ make users begin to think about their living wants and needs. For college students, specifying a campus location broadens the listings to include on-campus housing.

Usability Testing

Press each screen to start! ⤵️

making tweaks by …

Presenting my prototype to six users, both college students and young adults, there were some common points of design feedback.

1. Inconsistency with color proportions between screens

2. “For you” page could be a bit more personalized

3. Navigation bar a little hard to read

Solutions

• Maintain a library of buttons styles and designate colors for those buttons

• Use some clever copy such as '‘Close to parks’, rather than ‘Suggested’

• Decrease icon size and increase font size for better legibility

Takeaways

🌟  Practice Makes Perfect!

Throughout the weeks of building Rentsy, I learned to consistently elevate the quality of my designs by soliciting feedback from my mentor and peers through design reviews and group crits. I learned how essential maintaining good communication is with my learning community, especially when asking clarifying questions to remove blockers and balance pressing deadlines. Diving deeper into the design process, I was able to develop my product to a higher quality than I was able to before. Now, I’ll move on to the next challenge and keep practicing my skills! Although design is never perfect (or finished) developing projects push me to become a better designer!