From beginning to end, finding a new home to rent or lease can be a difficult and stressful journey. Showpads seeks to create a service that matches both dependable renters and landlords/property owners making the experience efficient and enjoyable for everyone. By creating a community of reliable users Showpads aims to create a small but dependable and trustworthy network of renters, landlords, and realtors.
To create a mobile app that helps match renters with vacant homes.
Role
UX Designer
Team Members
George Economou
Tools
Sketch, Figma, Invision
Timeframe
February – July 2020
Platform
Mobile Responsive Web
I began with surveys and interviews of both renters and realtors to identify and understand user trends and needs. Here's some of the things that both realtors and renters said:
The renter survey included 34 individuals that responded. the main takeaway was the problem of time; renters often felt that getting in touch with realtors or owners was not efficient at all.
The survey with realtors included 15 responses and saw similar issues come up again. Realtors often felt that there was a lack of pre-vetting being done that the realtors themselves had to do on potential renters.
Understanding how other real estate websites operate gives a clearer picture on how to build a matching service.
Offering a two way search service
able to provide services that other competitors do not offer helps create a unique brand for Showpads.
Affinity Mapping allowed me to identify trends and highlight some of the more common pain points for our potential users.
User personas help paint a fuller picture by humanizing the problem and creating individuals that potential users can relate to. User personas also represent a majority of potential users interviewed. Many of the user traits, pain points, and needs that our two personas Tracy and Robert have our interviewees have as well.
Information from analyzing and organizing user research led me to prioritize what kind of features users needed more than what they wanted. The challenge here was keeping in mind the two different users and their own separate needs.
Creating a user flow helps to map out what a user may come across. User Flows also allow me to better organize Information Architecture by visualizing where a user may end up.
Sketching out ideas is the only way to truly get an idea what the user can see. It is a fast way to get basic prototypes tested and explore what ideas work and what does not. The goal here was to translate theory into something a bit more tangible and workable and place myself in the shoes of a user.
Moving from the physical to the digital space allowed me to create a basic usable clickable prototype and help finalize what features I could improve on.
