Have you ever faced the daily pains of living with roommates that have impacted your overall quality of life in a shared living arrangement?
My Role
User Interface
User Experience
UX Strategy
Business model
User Research
Guide Creation
Data Synthesis
Ideation
Wire-framing
Tools
Figma
Miro
Adobe Illustrator
Adobe Premier Pro
Google Forms
Duration
09 Weeks
Design Process
Problem Statement
The trend of shared housing or co-living spaces has risen significantly since 2016. Increased mobility & the culture shift to work from home after the pandemic have boosted a desire amongst young adults to move around and live in new places. This has resulted in frequent searches for new roommates, to share the rent, expenses, and experiences with. One in every three adults in the USA live with roommates and 41% of them have faced cleanliness issues. We identified "shared housing" as our key trend. The idea of shared housing is particularly well-liked by millennials since it offers a more affordable, flexible, and convenient accommodation option.
The aim is to provide a platform through which people can easily find roommates based on their preferences and manage the household with them for a comfortable and peaceful living space.
Opportunity area
The idea is to improve the experience of shared co-living spaces for individuals
for young adults, students, or working professionals moving away from home for work or studies or for convenience.
The user struggles today because in an era of globalization and shared economy, shared housing has reemerged as a viable economic option. As more and more people switch to this lifestyle, there is also an increase in the negative living experiences in shared housing, which affects the mental health of house-sharers.
It is an ever-growing market globally faced by most individuals in their everyday life. The platform would give you an opportunity to create better shared accommodation experiences.
Stakeholders
01: Research
Competitive Analysis
We researched the existing social networking service existing in the market, closer to our brand concept of “ living in a co-housing” and discovered a list of platforms that offer services that are more task-specific in terms of finding roommates, task management & splitting expenses.
We further did a competitive study with the help of a segment matrix & blue ocean strategy to analyze in depth their objective, customer segment, product offerings, and services to help find “our space” in the market.
2 x 2 Matrix
Opportunities
Strengths
Threats
Weakness
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Holistic platform, addressing & empathizing different needs of people sharing an apartment.
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Enhanced experience of co-living by creating a comfortable, peaceful & happy living space.
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No update on daily tasks.
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No compromise to complete the task assigned.
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No empathy for other flatmates sharing the house.
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Establish ties with universities/colleges globally.
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Risk from already existing, well established SNS catering to the task specific needs of users.
Blue Ocean Strategy
Primary Research
We conducted primary research for our customer segmentation through online surveys and interviews to get an in-depth evaluation to understand their needs for our social networking service concept. It helped us understand their emotions, frustrations, personal stories, and actions of how they dealt with their roommates.
After forwarding our online survey & conducting interviews we collected data points from each of these methods of primary research.
We clustered them through the methods of contextual research.
Survey
40 participants
Interview
10 participants
Click here for interview guide
Insights from contextual inquiry
At the end of clustering our data points, we had six user insights that were crucial for the further design process.
02: Analyze
Value Proposition
WHAT?
A holistic platform that addresses the problems of people living in shared rental spaces to provide a comfortable peaceful & happy living space.
HOW?
By providing a platform to find a roommate to their preference through a roommate matching service, will further help them manage their daily household tasks better.
WHEN?
In a time when the concept of shared economy and co-housing is significantly increasing.
After the pandemic the concept of working from home significantly increased, changing the needs in people’s lifestyles & looking for long-term staycations.
WHY?
To drive behavioral changes and ensure positive social interactions, a comfortable living space in shared housing leads to a better quality of life for house-sharers
WHO?
For students, working professionals, young adults, & digital nomads finding new accommodation.
WHERE: In cities & towns in the U.S
Empathy Maps
After conducting personal interviews with our participants, we analyzed & arranged the most impactful & resourceful data points for our research on an empathy map: for students & working professionals.
Each of these quadrants has data points from participants about what they had to say, think, feel and do while living in shared housing or while looking for roommates.
User Scenario
Kathy is moving out of her parent's apartment in Washington, and she is trying to find a flatmate through Facebook groups. She is worried that she hasn’t met them in person. Her mom introduces Co-Ho to her and suggests she make an account and find people on Co-Ho. Kathy finds Daisy on Co-Ho and found Daisy also goes to church every Sunday. Kathy moves in with Daisy, and now they go to church together on Sunday.
03: Create
User Scenario
The value pillars Connect, Communicate & Manage formed the foundation of the SNS concept.
These value pillars collectively shaped the commitment to crafting impactful and user-centric experiences with the project.
Value Proposition Canvas
We mapped all our insights & data points onto a value proposition canvas to understand the pains, gains, and customer jobs of the users to get a broader perspective and to cluster them in the right quadrant.
We conducted a fit analysis of all the problems, gains, and customer jobs that we were able to resolve and identified potential user touch points.
User Touchpoints
The categorization of the user touch points is based on the ideation of our main features catering to the needs of the users. The user touchpoints helped us understand the flow of our app and how would it benefit our customers. There are eight main user touchpoints that we mapped.
User Flow
Wireframe
04: Design Solution and Testing
A digital application that will provide our users a service to live in a co-housing in an organized manner to have an amiable bond with roommates and a peaceful environment.
Homepage
Task Management
Roommate Searching
Expense Management
Hangout
Usability Testing
We conducted usability testing to test if our potential users are able to navigate through our prototype.
05: Develop
Business Model Canvas
Key Take-aways and Reflections
Task dependencies: There were time when the work got pushed back due to interconnectivity of tasks between team members.
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Communication: Recognizing the importance of clear and transparent communication, helps to ensure information flows seamlessly across the team, reducing misunderstandings and enhancing collaboration.
Limited User Availability: There were times when it was difficult in recruiting and scheduling user participants for research sessions, leading to delays in gathering valuable insights.
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Effective collaboration: Once we recognized every team members super powers, it made the process more efficient and fun.