OurHome: an original house-hunting app for Cornellians living off-campus for the first time. An INFO 3450 HCI semester project.
Timeline
September 2021 -
December 2021
My Roles
UX Designer
UX Researcher
Deliverable
Interactive
Prototype
Tools
Figma
Type
Class Project
(Group)
OurHome is a one-stop solution for "Cornell house-hunting rookies", i.e. rising juniors and seniors who plan to no longer live in dorms, find their ideal cribs efficiently. The app not only feeds users up-to-date listings in Collegetown, but also affords undelayed information sharing and decision-making with future roommates, built-in tour scheduling with landlords, and a roadmap calendar that puts these first-time housing-seekers on track.
My Work
I individually ideated and prototyped one of the four key features in the app-Understanding Competiton. Also, I conducted user interviews and usability testings, helped prototype other interactions, and heavily contributed to brainstorming and peer design critique sessions.
Foundational
Research
Context
Cornell requires all underclassmen to live in dorms. They typically have zero experience in house-hunting before entering junior year. When they do it for the first time, such lack of knowledge on when, how and what housings to look for, coupled with intense academics and social responsibilities, make the entire process draining and time-consuming.
Research Insights
After conducting six interviews with students from our tageted population, we found that:
- There is a lot of stress from lacking knowledge about general timelime. Interviewees have no idea either how soon housings are "gone" or when to start looking.
- Reaching consensus with future roommates is time-consuming. Long and inefficient communication could result in lsing the ideal listing.
- Too many apps and websites to keep track of. Interviewees are tired from jumping between listing sites, roommate group chats, and email/phone for contacting landlords.
People Problem
Cornellians looking for student housing for the first-time want to find their ideal home efficiently and confidently. But they cannot do so, because:
- They spend too much time browsing many house-hunting resources and discussing with roommates amid busy lives as college students.
- They miss out on the opportune times to start looking for housing in general or to sign the lease for a specific property they like.
Persona
Brainstorming
Following interview analysis, we began brainstorming by asking four key "How Mights We"s:
- HMW help users save time?
- HMW help users discuss potential hoems and reach consensus faster?
- HMW let users know how much competition they are facing in getting an listing?
- HMW help users understand trends of the housing market?
To answer these questions, we each ideated and created 15 sketches for potential solutions. These ideas are wildly creative yet practical, and include both physical and digital designs.
After internal voting, we settled on creating an one-stop house-hunting app with the following features:
Features
1. Preference Form
Shown to all users during onboarding, this Profile page form will help users save time by auto-feeding them the most suitable apartments/houses based on their own preferences.
2. Roommate Zone
This built-in chat room allows users to share listings, photos, and opinions with their future roommates. There is also a polling feature for listings. Consensus is reached faster than ever.
3. Understanding Competition
Number of times a property has been shared with roommates on this app is the most accurate metric for property popularity. That number, coupled with the message on the second screen, will prompt users to take actions quickly for a specific desired property.
4. Roadmap Calendar
A Calendar tab for both scheduling tours and learning about the house-hunting timeline. Supported by research data from previous years, users can see how many rental homes were still available on X day in 2021, 2020, etc. and plan out their roadmap accordingly.
Sitemap
Style Guide
Reflection
I would like to first thank all my wonderful teammates. Eva Kang, Hang Jiang, and Mitchell Lin, for their hard work, professionalism and valuable critique. I have personally also learned a lot from the last one. To quote Ray Dalio, "[accurate] feedback, especially about mistakes and weaknesses, provided in a non-hierarchical way and openly shown is a powerful force for improvement and team building." I have come to truly appreciate receiving feedback.
Brainstorming should be borderlessly creative. From the challenging yet rewarding 15-sketch ideation assignment, I have realized that true design thinking should not be confined to technical solutions only, and that I should always think fast, broadly and visually.
© Hank Lin 2023