Dream Home

Dream Home is a streamlined apartment hunting and application experience, while minimizing disappointing surprises.

Overview

Dream Home is a passion project app designed for New York City residents that want to discover accurate listings, housing within their price range, and reliable property owners, without any disappointing surprises often associated with apartment hunting. One of the biggest challenges of moving into or across New York is coordinating relocation with a new apartment, while handling different property management companies. Apartment listings online are the modern way of examining current options, however, many of these listings can have very limited information about the apartment itself, as well as how to tour and apply for the apartment.

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My role was to evaluate current digital platforms that list rental properties and create a new concept for an improved experience.

What I did

I conducted a one week sprint to explore the design of apartment renting apps.

5

Sprint Days

8

Screens

20

Components

Context

I began by conducting light market research to put our target into perspective. The purpose was to evaluate the current digital platforms available and discover what strengths and weaknesses there could be. It was important to identify what features come expected with such an app and what opportunities there are to expand on.

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The five top questions I needed answered were:

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What features are common across platforms?
What features are platform specific?
How does a user typically explore the platform?
Is the application process done through these platforms?
What areas can be improved or done differently?

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Approach

A User Persona for a typical apartment hunter was created to evaluate old and new software features based on how well they would solve the user's pain points. From there, using the features recorded from the different platforms, a new set of standard features was consolidated for Dream Home. These were organized based on returning features from previous platforms, as well as new possible solutions through ideation.

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Based on insights drawn from previous listing platforms, as well as the set of features, I created the user flow for how the user would theoretically travel through the app to conversion. Conversion is focused on ensuring the user has everything they need to decide to send an application for the apartment, which will include its own fees for submission.

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A key function is offering suggested apartment listings before a dedicated search, based on preferences established during profile creation. These preferences can be changed and edited later on, or overridden by using a direct search through the search function. Fully 3D virtual tours can also help mitigate uncertainty and encourages users to either book an in-person tour, or apply.

Execution

After finalizing the user flow and final set of features for the app, my priorities were to implement the following solutions:

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Minimize the amount of clicks necessary to view as many offerings as possible.
Offer options based on apartment preferences and their prioritization.
Guide and support the user through the application process on the app.

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It was important to give the app experience a similar style to other apartment listing platforms. While having it's own distinctive look and visual clarity is important to differentiate, it's also important to not stray too far from current standards. This way, new adoption will be easier and smoother.

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I started with the Logo, general color choices, and worked my way up from there. Nailing down exact measurements and units for the app was necessary, to reduce redundancy and ensure that every individual listing can be filled easily without any further design input.

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Conclusion

Overall, these can be seen as vast improvements over previous examples seen. While User Testing can verify and conclude success, there is a strong argument to make that a combined apartment listing / tour scheduling / application solution would be worth pursuing. Likening to other digital solutions, such as online movie ticketing or food delivery services, testing would be needed to validate if people will willingly pay reasonable extra fees if it ensures convenience and ease of use. In addition, improving transparency within the rental industry would be a tremendous step toward empowering tenants.

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Screening Power is currently in favor of landlords. For landlords to adopt a model of increased transparency would require a growing tenant's favored market, those willing to pay premiums for increased assurances, or simply pressure from rapid app adoption & demand.

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Saving application inputs may prove to be valuable to the user in speeding up the process. However, saving more sensitive information for the convenience of speed may pose a security risk.

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