I outlined testing structures, delegating team tasks, and synthesizing results using priority matrices
I designed the housemate survey flow, prioritizing accessibility and visual hierarchy, and helped create UniMate's branding and design system.
Undergraduates struggle with where and how to find compatible off-campus housing and housemates. With the COVID-19 pandemic preventing many from exploring campus neighborhoods, the housing and housemate search has become especially difficult for first-timers.
60% of college students live in rental off-campus housing not owned by universities. (NMHC, 2020)
73.3% of students have difficulty in the housing-searching process due to inexperience, time constraints, and the competitive housing market.
Streamline the housing-search process with a central-housing outlet
By breaking down the search process and centralizing the necessary information, we can make the housing and housemate-search process less stressful for inexperienced and busy undergraduates.
Customize your preferences to match with compatible housemates
Save and compare housing options to find the best place for you
We wanted to find the methods and platforms undergraduates use to find housing or housemates and their experience using those means.
In the 71 surveys and 10 interviews we conducted with undergraduates, we found:
73.3% of respondents found the housing-searching process to be at least somewhat difficult due to inexperience, time constraints and pressures, and the competitive housing market.
Students prioritize certain characteristics in their housemates. Over 2/3 of respondents identified good living habits (ex. cleanliness) as “very important” when looking for prospective housemates.
Respondents mostly utilized online resources in their search, with the most popular platform being Facebook Groups, followed by official apartment websites such as Zillow.
Many respondents favored online platforms with direct messaging and curated post features that allow for simultaneous browsing and connecting. But, they’ve also expressed concerns about the potential scams, the falsifying of information, and frustrations at the lack of a sorting system on these platforms.
Using our research, we organized common housing/housemate pain points into six categories. We created How Might We statements for each point to narrow the scope of the problem.
The main frustrations essentially centered around compatibility, inexperience, and accessibility to information.
We discovered that undergraduates struggled most with finding housemates with a similar living style and finding housing with the preferred accommodations.
Once we’ve established our primary focus, we refined our How Might We statements to better understand our user’s journey in finding college housing. According to our interviewees, many begin their process by searching for housemates. Once they've found a group, they work together to find housing that suits all their preferences before touring the best fits.
To further narrow our solution search, we asked ourselves:
How might we create a streamlined platform for college students to find housing catered to their needs and housemates with similar living styles?
With these statements in mind, we determined the key features of our app.
To look for compatible housemates, users create a profile to match and connect with others on a personal level.
To address the housing issue, users filter preferences and view live showings on a map easily see what options are available to them.
We took our research insights and began sketching ideas that encompassed the entirety of our user journey, voting on the features we wanted to implement out of our numerous iterations.
Our initial user flow included features that failed to tackle user pain points, such as in-app messaging and face-timing. To re-emphasize our problem statement, we refined our user flow to only focus on user needs: identity verification, housing search, and housemate matching.
After voting on the design solution, we began prototyping the mid-fidelity wireframes, where we:
Created a comprehensive preference selection system to tackle compatibility concerns between housemates
Incorporated a filter-and-compare feature to guide users through their housing search
Added a simple student verification process to tackle security concerns of false advertisements
We continued refining our designs to find the most intuitive and user-friendly version, focusing on exploring possible design variations for each frame and feature during the low-to-mid-fidelity stage and iterating several versions of our designs for users to experiment with during usability testing.
We conducted a total of eight usability tests on various undergraduates, ranging from incoming first-years to fourth-years.
Usability Testing Goal:
Evaluate users’ ability to navigate our mid-fi prototype and learn which features they’ll use most
User Tasks:
From these tests, we found:
Our design system stems from our research insights: our users reported that they felt unsafe on other platforms due to the likelihood of scams and found the housing and housemate-searching process to be stressful.
Brand Style
Soft Components
We softened harsh corners and utilized icons from Feather Icons as they accurately symbolized the functions in our product whilst adhering to our friendly brand identity.
Colors
Blues and Oranges
Based on color theory, we chose turquoise, which represents a blend of trust and community, and orange, which represents fun, as our main color palette.
Typography
Univers
We chose Univers for its friendly, modern, and simplistic style.
UniMate aims to ease the housemate and housing search process for undergraduate students by providing them a way to securely and directly connect with other students and housing complexes that fit their preferences.
This first “real” team design sprint made me realize how important it is to work with other designers as we bounce off ideas, give honest critiques, and support each other in our shortcomings. We grew closer as a team and as friends, and that positive environment is where design projects thrive.
It was only after taking a break from UniMate that I realized how important breaks were to prevent burnout. From then on, I made mental notes to pause and step back every so often to reevaluate and breathe. Breaks are necessary to make sure a project runs and launches smoothly!
It was difficult coordinating work sessions with our schedules and the sudden change to remote work. This was our first team project as designers as well, so it took a bit to get used to working alongside designers and fostering team dynamics.
We came to realize that not all our ideas were realistic with our time frame and experience. We had many sessions where we circled back to features and discussions in hopes of implementation, but we came to understand the necessity of limits.
