Case study: Find a roommate
Design Challenge
You have just been hired as the new UI/UX Designer for a brand new startup company. After much research, data shows that many people struggle to find a roommate. The company decides that the best way to approach this is by creating a mobile app that solves this problem and targets those currently searching for a roommate. The company’s primary goal is to help people find roommates. You’ve been tasked to help design the experience of finding an ideal roommate in an area.
Task: Design a mobile product experience that makes finding the ideal roommate in your city safe. Consider the following in your presentation:
- Buyer persona(s)
- User journey
- The features that you believe are required to solve this issue
- Wireframes for your design
- The thought process behind your design
To tackle this, I have drafted six steps to achieve this.
Step 1: Understand the goal of the project
Here, the goal of the product is to create a product/app that matches a potential roommate with individuals searching for accommodation/roommate to someone looking to accommodate a roommate.
This is an opportunity to reduce the time and energy expended in house hunting and the bureaucracy with house agents.
Step 2: Define the Audience (Who)
For this product, we need to understand the people we’re building for. These can be classified into
i) Age: 18 years to 50 years (Millennials and Urban Citizens)
ii) Location: Urban Cities
Step 3: Understanding the Customers Context and needs (When and Where)
The goal here is to understand when and where our potential customers might experience this problem and how we can solve it. This information will help us know what product and features we should build in the following steps.
For this step, I’ll make use of the User Story Technique.
As a/an young undergraduate/graduate/executive/employee who just moved into a new location/can’t afford the cost of an entire apartment, I want to easily find a roommate that fits my personal preference quickly so that it won’t affect my schooling and work-life.
Step 4; List Ideas
Now is the time to explain what the company could build to fulfill the customer/s needs
- Type of Product: Digital
- Platform: Smartphone
- Type of Interface: Graphic
Possible Solution
Build a digital product that users can download from their app stores. The product integrates the user’s smartphone using Google maps and GPS to display house directions and nearest available accommodation of those that need a roommate based on the user’s preferred criteria.
Step 5: Solve
The deliverables for the product is
i) Hi-Fidelity Wireframe
ii) User Journeys
iii) Sketches
iv) User Personas
v) Design Prototype
Storyboarding
In this technique, I mapped out the customer’s journey to see what interactions our products need to support them. Exploring these interactions gave me some ideas for the interface.
List of tasks the customers need to be able to complete to use the product successfully
i) Sign Up |Log In
ii) Verify Phone Number | Email Address
iii) Verify Identity
iv) Choose an apartment from the list of sponsored apartments and available apartments on the homepage
v) Filter and search for apartments based on budget and personal preference
vi) Select apartment based on apartment details
vii) Chat or directly call the potential roommate to meet up
viii) Meet Up, agree and mark apartment gotten
Hi-Fidelity Screens
You can take a look at the prototype below
Step 6: Measuring Success
As a final step, before shipping this product, I’d work with the product manager to understand what KPIs we should measure and what would be considered a success.
