Homely
Digital Platform that Provides Support to Students Throughout Housing Experience
Project Overview
This platform was developed as part of a UX & Product Management course I took during my university studies.
We were tasked with identifying a unique user need and provide a user-centered experience that will solve that need.
Project Scope
For this project, we worked in teams of 3 interdisciplinary students in which we all brought a variety of complimentary skills. We conducted extensive market and user research before developing our high-fidelity wireframe designs on Figma.
BACKGROUND
Prompt
Students today are more curious than ever to move away from home for their studies, whether it be to a new city or an entirely different country. This gives them the chance to explore new environments and cultures, meet a more diverse array of people and learn in specific schools or programs that wouldn't be available to them otherwise.
When searching for accommodation, many students prefer off-campus housing over student dorms for a variety of reasons– such as affordability, flexibility, privacy, control over amenities and roommates and a more authentic and immersive experience of the local community.
However, more often than not, the process of finding student housing and suitable roommates can be stressful, time-consuming and prone to mistakes due to a lack of accurate information.
Source:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-fitness-priority-millennial-traveler-mikael-vincents-nielsen/
User Need
Book student-friendly long-term housing near campuses and connect with potential roommates to share accommodation with.
Challenge
How might we provide support to students that want to book student-friendly long-term housing near campuses and connect with potential roommates to share accommodation with?
Solution
A one-stop shop digital platform that provides holistic support to students in Israel throughout their entire housing experience. Homely offers affordable and student-friendly accommodation options near campuses, matches students with suitable roommates to live with, facilitates students' interactions with their landlords and potential roommates and creates a supportive community of students.
RESEARCH
Target Audience
Students worldwide between the ages of 17-28 that are looking to book long-term, fully furnished and affordable accommodation near their place of learning and/or roommates to share their accommodation with.
Our product will have two main personas; students interested in booking housing and landlords looking to rent out their student-friendly accommodations.
For the purpose of this project, I will be focusing on the student perspective and they will represent my main persona.
Interviews
We conducted a number of interviews with users that fit our target audience in order to envision our main persona. The candidates were students between the ages of 20-28 who were currently searching for housing and/or roommates or had done so in the recent past.
The interviews were conducted in person and special focus was dedicated to the Observation section where we asked our interviewees to walk us through the process they of booking housing and choosing roommates.
Some of the questions we asked included:
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How did you search for student accommodation?
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What difficulties did you face in the process?
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How was your housing experience?
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Were you also looking for roommates? If so, how?
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What were your concerns regarding your roommate search?
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What would you have done differently?
Empathy Map
Once the interviews were completed, we gathered our insights and distilled our key takeaways into an Empathy Map to better understand our user's pain points and what opportunities presented themselves for Homely.
SAYS
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"It took me 3 months to find an apartment and I ended up having to settle on both my price and location preferences"
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"I messaged over 100 people on Facebook groups and barely got any responses"
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"I didn't know anything about my roommates before moving in – I was just relieved to have finally booked an apartment"
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"I didn't get to see my apartment or meet my roommates before moving halfway across the world"
THINKS
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"There's not enough information about the listing online and no way to check if these images are recent and reliable"
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"Competition is very tight for this apartment – there's no way I'll get it"
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"I wish there was a way to filter through price and location on Facebook Groups"
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"How do I know this landlord isn't going to scam or take advantage of me?"
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"What if these roommates lead completely different lives to me?"
DOES
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Join Facebook Groups/ apps dedicated to rentals
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Check prices and compares between listings
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Scroll through listing images
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Message listing owner to get additional information
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If listing details are in foreign language, copies and pastes text into Google Translate
FEELS
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Frustrated
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Overwhelmed by options
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Anxious
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Unsure who to trust
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Lost
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Difficulty navigating existing housing platforms
USER
User Persona
At this point, we felt that we had sufficient information on our users and set out to build our main target persona.
JACOB JONES
Age: 18 | Location: Colorado | Occupation: Student | Status: Single
Background
Jacob is set to start his Engineering studies at Boston University in the fall and is excited to get to know Boston and meet lots of new friends. However, he's not familiar with the city at all and doesn't know any of his peers yet, so he's unsure about where to start his search for housing.
I didn't know that finding roommates and an affordable apartment would be the hardest part about starting college.
Goals
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Find a student-friendly apartment in the area close by to the university with an understanding landlord
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Look for a roommate who has similar lifestyle and interests
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Get tips about living in Boston and university life from past students
Frustrations
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Confused about which apartments are suitable for students
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Doesn’t know anyone else at university and is apprehensive about ending up with difficult roommates
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Is new to the city and feels lost
Introvert
Extrovert
Thinking
Feeling
Analytical
Creative
Passive
Active
Conservative
Liberal
Optimistic
Passionate
Intelligent
Impatient
Determined
Shy
Responsible
COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS
Market Research
Homely operates in the Student Housing market. The market is made up of both local and international students renting temporary student-friendly accommodation near campuses.
The market potential is very large with approximately 8.6 million students reporting a need for student housing near campus in a 2020 US study. Additionally, as of 2018, 60% of US university students live in rental housing, not owned by universities.
The pandemic brought about a temporary disruption to the market given the decline in demand for student housing, but it is slowly regaining momentum and annual investments in US student housing have tripled since 2014– reaching nearly $11 billion in investments.
Competitors
Homely operates in the Student Housing market. The market is made up of both local and international students renting temporary student-friendly accommodation near campuses.
The market potential is very large with approximately 8.6 million students reporting a need for student housing near campus in a 2020 US study. Additionally, as of 2018, 60% of US university students live in rental housing, not owned by universities.
The pandemic brought about a temporary disruption to the market given the decline in demand for student housing, but it is slowly regaining momentum and annual investments in US student housing have tripled since 2014– reaching nearly $11 billion in investments.
ClassPass is a monthly membership that provides users monthly credits to book classes and appointments in studios, gyms, spas and
salons worldwide.
ClassPass is a monthly membership that provides users monthly credits to book classes and appointments in studios, gyms, spas and
salons worldwide.
Students use Facebook Groups as a tool to find available housing and roommates
in their desired area.
By joining housing-themed groups, students are able to view hundreds of listing in their requested city and reach out to the listing owners for details.
ClassPass is a monthly membership that provides users monthly credits to book classes and appointments in studios, gyms, spas and
salons worldwide.
ClassPass is a monthly membership that provides users monthly credits to book classes and appointments in studios, gyms, spas and
salons worldwide.
On the AmberStudent platform, users can search
from a wide- selection of accommodations and
receive personalized recommendations based on preferences like rent, distance from university and budget.
ClassPass is a monthly membership that provides users monthly credits to book classes and appointments in studios, gyms, spas and
salons worldwide.
ClassPass is a monthly membership that provides users monthly credits to book classes and appointments in studios, gyms, spas and
salons worldwide.
Roomi is a free mobile platform that helps people find flexible, affordable and safe co-living solutions for millenials. Every room rental posted on their platform is user-generated and verified by the Roomi team.
ClassPass is a monthly membership that provides users monthly credits to book classes and appointments in studios, gyms, spas and
salons worldwide.
ClassPass is a monthly membership that provides users monthly credits to book classes and appointments in studios, gyms, spas and
salons worldwide.
Uniplaces is an accommodation marketplace for students, young workers, digital nomads, travelers or families. Uniplaces offers mid and long-term rentals, mainly to the European and South American market.
Features
After extensive research on the market and Homely's competitors, we identified opportunity areas for Homely and developed a basic features list that would simultaneously answer the needs of our potential users and differentiate Homely form its competitors.
Housing Directory
Including information about the location, price, size of each unit, included amenities, availability...
Messaging Platform
Allows students to communicate with landlords and potential roommates via text and video call
Wishlist
Easily accessible list of favorite housing options and matched roommates
Community
Forum section where students can ask for advice or share tips about finding housing and living in a new city.
Map View
Shows the locations of housing options, public transportation, grocery stores, and other amenities
Virtual Tour
Students are able to get a 360 ̊ interactive view of the housing so there's no need for an in-person visit
Online Payment System
Allows students to easily and
securely pay their rent and
other bills
Matching System
Helps students find compatible roommates based on age, gender, interests...
Translation Service
Instantly translates housing info and messages from local language to preferred language
Calendar
Keeps track of important dates,
such as when rent is due or when maintenance is scheduled.
Product Market Fit
These features set Homely apart from its competitors and create a unique positioning in the market.
Catered for Students
Broad Audience
End-to-end Solution
Partial Solution
DESIGN SOLUTIONS
Sketches
Once we knew what the main features of our platform would be, we started off by sketching out some of the pages.
User Flow
Below is a detailed User Flow for our platform's main use case.
Low-Fidelity
Mockups
Housing Browse + Selection Process:
Roommate Browse + Match Process:
Inbox + Translation Sevice:
Profile Settings:
We then proceeded to create low-fidelity sketches of our application on Figma to get a better idea of how our key features would look and what possible user experience pain points could arise.
Final Product
After multiple iterations of Usability Testing, we perfected our designs and flows to come up with the final interactive prototype.
Visual Design
REFLECTIONS
Conclusion
Building out Homely from scratch was an excellent learning experience. Hearing from students how frustrated they were with the current booking process reinforced for us the need for this service and encouraged us to create a product that was as user-friendly as possible and would limit any friction in the cumbersome process of finding student housing and roommates.
I truly enjoyed the process of working together as a team and asking each other the difficult questions that would get us to the best possible iteration of our MVP.
Like what you see?
Drop me a line!
Contact me at noaisrael26@gmail.com or connect on LinkedIn.