Mobile UI Designer
March 2023 - May 2023
UI, Human-Centric Design, UX Research
Julian Meyn, Julia An, Michael Lu, Hannah Park, and me :)
Tours by Tenants (TT) allows users to view tours of housing units provided by other current or previous residents. This reduces the need for students to tour every housing option by offering real photos and videos, saving time in the search.
This reduces the need for students to tour every housing option by offering real photos and videos, saving time in the search.
Similar to other home rental sites, there is a map view, options to view floor plans and virtual tours, filter by amenities, and reviews. After initial user testing, I added an option to message current or previous tenants and landlords. The goal of this project was to make the housing search process as stress-free for college students as possible, streamlining the journey to save time by making a centralized platform.
From speaking with 11 students through user interviews, we confirmed that finding off-campus housing was a commen struggle. From a user survey we conducted with 16 participants, 43.8% of them began searching for housing 6+ months in advance and 36.6% toured at least 4 different potential spots.
Through affinity our research insights, we focused on these three common pain point clusters. Students found the housing search process time-consuming, unorganized without a tracking method, and challenging when trying to align personal preferences with those of roommates.
From our affinity and journey map, we validated that students found the search process overwhelming. It is especially challenging to keep yourself organized and narrowing options, along with aligning with your roommates on your preferences.
At this stage, we broke off from our teams and began our individual solution ideation!
Seeing as there was a need for a centralizing platform for housing information, I thought a mobile app would be the best way to deliver the solutions. But before that, I needed to look at a commonly used competitor - Apartments.com.
From walking through the process of finding listings here using the filters and map view, and looking through some of the listings, I realized an issue that sites like these had:
Initial onboarding, home page, and listing screens
Adding filtering by location and proximity radius and housing manager messaging post user-testing
After running 5 more user tests with my lowfis , I found that users had difficulties navigating through the flows seamlessly. There was some confusion on the home page and users thought the UI was cluttered, especially on the apartment page. I did a full redesign of the 3 main components of this app: the home page, the listing page, and filtering screens.
Home Page Before
SEARCH
Users can search by location, price range, number of bedrooms, and other filters.
MAP VIEW
Users can view available properties on a map and click on them to view more details.
SAVED
Users can save properties they're interested in and view them later.
Property Details
PHOTOS & VIDEOS
Users can view photos and videos of the property taken by current or previous tenants.
REVIEWS
Users can read reviews from current or previous tenants about their experience living at the property.
MESSAGING
Users can message current or previous tenants to ask questions about the property.
Tenant Profile
PROFILE
Users can view their profile and edit their preferences.
SAVED PROPERTIES
Users can view all their saved properties in one place.
MESSAGES
Users can view and respond to messages from other users.
This project was a great way for me to start practicing my UI design skills. I was able to get feedback and make improvements in each iteration to improve the usability, user flows, and overall aesthetics. Shoutout to my team for planning all the research and synthesizing the key findings. It was a blast working while folding paper cranes!
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