You’re about to pack up and move to a new city for a job. The most critical aspect of moving to a new area is where you are going to live, and who you might live with. Finding roommates can be an awkward, uncomfortable experience, and far too many people have roommate horror stories - but that doesn’t have to be the case. How can we enhance roommate/room seeking applications to be more customized to the user?

Research goals:
1. Understand and define common practices when searching for a room or roommate (where do people search for rooms/roommates, what callouts are they paying attention to, what questions would they might have throughout the exploration process)
2. Understand the issues users may face looking for a room or roommate
3. Determine what the success factors are behind finding a suitable space/mate
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Problem statement & Research

Phase I

Jun 2016 — Jul 2017

Survey

I first surveyed 20 people from the ages of 19-24, asking them about their previous experience with roommate searching and what they were generally looking for.

Responses

I asked users some questions regarding their experiences with former roommates and what their ideal roommate situation would be. The following below are some responses I received.

What qualities do you look for in a roommate?

Have you ever had a bad roommate experience? If yes, please explain

Insights

Based on the research conducted, we can draw some common experiences users have while searching for a roommate.
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1. People tend to trust social media (like Facebook) for finding roommates over other roommate finding platforms
2. Around 85% of users who participated in the survey had reported a negative roommate experience
3. Most users are seeking friendship from a potential roommate

Competitive Analysis Insights

1. Social media integration - Most users feel a level of safety when social media is incorporated into their roommate/room search. Things like photos, Facebook verification, and LinkedIn verification provides a safe and familiar experience.
2. Personalization - Most of the competitors provided some level of personalization when creating your account. Examples of this would be your interests, habits, preferences, etc. Though some competitors were more detailed than others.

Painpoints:
1. Personalization is limited to simple questions such as pet preference, diet, cleanliness - but there is an opportunity for additional personalization
2. Some listings are not verified and the profile of the lister is not detailed - making the listing look fake or untrustworthy
3. Filters are not as detailed as they could be - more in depth filters could result in a better match

User task flow

I needed to make sure the basic functions of the app were easily navigable. The two basic flows for the users are to 1.) find a roommate 2.) Find a room

Navigation

It was imperative to establish a basic yet precise navigation for the initial onboarding & questionnaire. This would set up the base filters and matches for the user seeking a roommate or room. I formulated the onboarding/questionnaire navigation based on my user research insights

Low Fidelity Wireframes

Style Guide

Before diving into all of the final designs, I established a style guide. Ensuring that the design had good balance, I made sure to use a color palette limited to 2 main colors.

High Fidelity Wireframes

Sign up & Onboarding

I wanted to create a warm and inviting environment to encourage users to find their perfect roommate. I accomplished this by utilizing illustrations that are in line with UI trends. The onboarding illustrations instruct the user on the steps needed to start using the app.

Roommates & Rooms

The home page is where users can explore either rooms or roommates. These results are based on compatibility from the users initial onboarding responses. The user can toggle between the roommate or rooms tabs, and can filter the results to better suit their needs, if needed.

Profile

A users profile displays some basic information about themselves including:

- A short "about me" section
- Information about what they do for work
- Their interests
- Basic personality characteristics
- Lifestyle preferences
- Current listings (if any)

If you have any of the same interests and character traits as another user, it will be highlighted

Room searching

The room search function offers the users everything they need to know up front. A clean UI presentation allows the exploration of rooms to be an easy process. Through initial scrolling, users can find spaces, seeing information regarding rent, availability and location. Users can quickly favorite an apartment they like to keep their options available. A filter is presented on the page, so options can be narrowed down to their liking. When finding an apartment of interest, users can click on the page and view the important details of the space, including rooms available, monthly rent, dimensions, amenities, location, as well as a description of the space and information about the poster. Verification will also be provided by the poster, so users can take comfort in knowing the legitimacy of the listing.

Roomcity