New Paths to Homeownership
for Homefinder
—
Mobile | Case Study | Two (2) Week Sprint, Fully Remote | 05/20/20
Figma | Sketch | Adobe Illustrator | Miro | Principle
Dwell is an attempt to leverage the existing foundation of HomeFinder and build a new path towards homeownership based on the rent-to-own model.
UX Challenge (and beyond)
The dream of homeownership is slipping away. We propose that home users can find a way to familiarize themselves with alternative models of homeownership (such as co-ownership and rent-to-own models) while identifying similar co-investors to discuss and build a physical and online community.
Left: Relationship between homeowner and home vacancy rates. Right: Stagnating growth of minimum wage in the U.S.
The wicked problem
Homeownership rates have seen a steep decline since the 2008 Financial Crisis. While the value of minimum wage has flatlined, property and rental prices have seen steady, linear growth. Meanwhile, the global COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated rates of unemployment, and the numbers do not look optimistic.
Defining the problems for people in the face of homeownership and understanding what we need to understand better.
Research
With this research into the existing landscape for real estate marketplaces, we performed a heuristic evaluation of the current site HomeFinder site and conducted remote interviews to understand our users and their emotional trail through the home finding process. This allows us to identify the source of pain points throughout their current experience and evaluate its severity. Look to the right for a sample of our study.
Our three primary users' actions and emotional journey: buyer, agent, and the seller (which we considered at the stage).
Mapping
In addition to this desire for community, our users expressed a lack of familiarity with the concept of co-ownership or rent-to-own models of homemaking. They each had their separate must-haves when describing their ideal co-ownership environment. Users stressed the importance of finding the right person, property type, property features, etc.
Full overview of app features to understand the components needed.
Information Architecture
For HomeFinder to innovate in the industry, it needs to break out of the traditional industry standard mold by becoming a social platform for alternative homeownership models that threads together home hunters, sellers, and real estate agents in discussion and community. We jump into the ideation process with our HMWs, and as a team, worked through a design studio session on a digital whiteboard to generate ideas for the layout and flow of the app.
Onboarding
Establishing the momentum of the onboarding process, both a critical phase that generates high friction with the user due to the necessities that a home application demands, was boiled down to it’s barebones requirements. Our team decides to offload the income verification procedure to after the user is on the platform. This moves shortens the onboarding by more than half, yet is sufficient enough to inform the listing recommendation system.
Wireflows are drawn from concept-making throughout the design studio.
Prototyping
The hypothesis being tested is that users will know when and where to click to achieve multiple tasks. If and when they are unable to perform those tasks smoothly, recommendations for iterations will arise. The goals of the test with our five (5) users were to observe any pain points or moments of pause and hear what the user thinks as they navigate through a task.
Our users were able to navigate through the given tasks effectively. As a team, we evaluated our bottom icon tab bar navigation as cluttered, decided to cut out the community discussion board as the main feature, and instead controlled the conversations around listings.
Results from testing the grayscale prototype and find usability pain points and get feedback on what works well for users.
Mid-fidelity
The mid-fi prototype features a digitized, greyscale version of the prototype. To test the grayscale prototype and find usability pain points and get feedback on what works well for users. Our users were able to click through the prototype with minimal hiccups. The pain points they experienced taught us where our iterations should begin and gave us a clear path to designing the Hi-Fi prototype. While overall, it was a smooth process, there were a few areas that caused moments of pause of users in the icon tab bar, new message notification, contact card quick views.
Hi-fidelity
We arrive at the final interactive prototype that addresses the issues unearthed through three stages of prototyping and two rounds of user tests. At this stage, our product guides our users through new models of homeownership, introduces them to a new form of a marketplace where communities and discussions can be built around relevant topics, content, and listings.
Reflection
The real estate industry is a slow and cumbersome machine, and the path to homeownership is well-known for its turbulence. Our dream for the project was to connect users over a traditionally solitary journey. Our particular challenge was that this journey- the path of homeownership through alternative models- was unfamiliar for too many. We set out to answer this issue in parallel with broader industry trends in light of this pandemic and the predicted economic fallout. It merely begins with communicating to our users that there is another solution.