Zillow - Find a Roommate
Sketch / InVision
Team class project to integrate a feature into the Zillow Rentals mobile app that would help people find a compatible roommate.
My role in the project included User Research, Sketching and Visual Design.
Who doesn’t know what Zillow is? In the market this company positioned themselves as service that “will help you find a place you’ll love”. Zillow has access to millions of listings across the U.S. that help people to stay on top of their house hunt. This company has committed to make online house shopping a fun and practical experience.
Problem
As the housing market value increases year by year, people are more willing to move back home with family or live with a roommate. The reasons for sharing a home are simple - lower their expenses and alleviate financial stress. Our project brief was to add a feature into the existing “Zillow Rentals” mobile app that would allow the user to find and match with a compatible roommate based on user defined preferences. The goal was to enable users to have more agency over who they lived with to make the sharing experience feel like a perfect home.
Preface
At the beginning of our project, our team needed to decide what direction we will focus on. We had to choose one of the following feature options:
Partnering to rent a new home together
Finding an existing home to join
Offering an existing home to others
We were relying on user’s interviews to distinguish what option they would rather have in the app and we chose partnering to rent a new home with an emphasis on personal compatibility.
User Research
Interview Insights
After screening people, I scheduled and conducted 4 user interviews. The truth is that the majority of people would not want to live with complete strangers, they would want to meet in person before moving in and have a visual picture of their future housemate.
A fun fact that appeared in user interviews was that people were comparing the roommate compatibility search with dating apps. 😄 During our Competitor Analysis we looked up different rental services and went through a several dating apps as well.
“If I would need to move in with someone that I don’t know, I would feel totally lost”
“The challenging part of living with a roommate - timing and logistics”
“When you choose a roommate you need to prepare yourself for future conflicts”
“People need to be willing to spend more time and effort to find a right match”
Affinity Map
The results of our affinity map showed that cleanliness, reliability, work schedule, honesty, visitors, pets, and habits lead to the core factors that our interviewees would want for a roommate compatibility search. At this point our team honestly got stuck for a couple days, trying to create a solution about personal preferences.
People have different mindsets, lifestyles, habits, preferences, and expectations for a person they will share a space with. In addition, they might have varying understanding of cleanliness, trust level, and reliability. All those qualities are not easily quantifiable, they are just too difficult to put a number to.
The Challenge
How can we help people find a roommate that meets their expectations and criteria?
Portrait of the Proto-Personas
Synthesis of user research helped us to create Primary and Secondary Proto-Personas - one of them is highly motivated to find a roommate who is a good fit, and the second is a person who just needs to move in with someone without as many concerns on compatibility.
Building out User Flows
We sketched our final user flow that demonstrates the path starting at logging in, creating a profile where you set your apartment search criteria, completing the form about the potential roommate which leads to matching results, and ending with a messaging option. Referring to Future App Map my team decided to separate rental options and roommate search in different tabs within the app.
Sketching, Ideating, Testing
We conducted a Design Studio within our group and created a final paper prototype that we tested with 3 users thereafter. The user’s task was to find a roommate by creating a profile. I was taking notes, documenting all of the feedback that we received.
We had a different options for roommate requirements such as yes/no answers, rating system, incorporating about me and conversation topics.
The first version of the profile page looked like a long form for a desktop version rather than for a mobile application, which was our focus.
Finally, “A-Ha Moment”
Our goal was to create not only a basic form about the apartment that our user is looking for, but also a system of values that will match, connect, and set up the meeting. Finally, we considered adding topics for conversations, that were the most important for people when looking for a compatible roommate. Then we would leave it up to the two users during their in-person discussion on which topics they preferred to go over.
Usability Testing Results
“Roommate tab took me awhile to find. Clearly can’t see it”
Some language was unclear in form, “Skip” and “Match” buttons were confusing
“What is the next step after matching with potential roommates?”
The Solution
The Prototype walks us through discovering “Find a Roommate” tab to creating a personal profile by filling up your rental amenities.
The rest of the profile is dedicated to roommate search that includes conversational topics for people who want to have a connection with a potential roommate.
Prototype on the left shows user flow from “My Matches” page to selecting a roommate and messaging them.
After our two week class project we presented our final prototype with the integrated Roommate search. Usability testing showed us that in general the feature worked well, was intuitive, and “looked like a real Zillow Rentals feature”. It was a challenging project from the beginning. We asked ourselves “Why?” several times before moving onto the future steps.
Lessons and Future Steps
1. Communication is a base for good and healthy relationships.
This project gave me a great experience working within a team and helped me to understand that communication plays an important part in the success of a team. It’s not only delegating tasks and working together, it is also being heard, engaged, and feel as an equally important element of the team. Our team worked well together from the beginning by setting up a team plan where we discussed not only our project plan, but also how we will make decisions in conflict situations if they appeared.
2. Better time planning.
As I mentioned before, the team and I spent more time on trying to create perfect questions before testing them. In retrospect we could have created multiple options and tested them directly with users to get an instant feedback. The lack of time played a vital role in only conducting 2 rounds of usability tests. I would focus more on the profile pages and iterate more on the position of Roommate search to avoid having two separated tab bars.