Project Overview

Synopsis
College towns are notorious for their lack of housing, and this certainly includes Davis. Apartment complexes fill up quickly and it can be tough to find a group of roommates in time. My team and I created a prototype of an app that safely allows students to meet potential roommates and discover available housing options. Our aim was to ensure student safety, connect students with compatible roommates, and serve students with both fresh and renewed leases.
Check out the case study below or skip to the solution!
Role
UI/UX, Visual Design, UX Research
Team
5 designers
Tools
Figma, Qualtrics,
Lucidchart
Timeline
8 weeks

The Problem

College towns are notorious for their lack of housing, and this certainly includes Davis.

Apartment complexes fill up quickly and it can be tough to find a group of roommates in time. Many students struggle to find people to live with when friend groups fall out, potential roommates turn out to be scammers, and some living preferences can't be compromised on.
user research

Understanding the Problem

Before we could build our app, my team and I first needed to understand our users' main concerns about finding roommates and housing. We created a survey on Qualtrics, which we distributed to our target audience, undergraduate students at UC Davis. Our questions focused on topics such as:
  • Getting to know the user
    We hoped to learn what kind of users would be most likely to use a product like this. What were their ages, genders, and years in school? Were they transfers or traditional four-year students?
  • Search methods
    We wanted to learn how our users were already searching for roommates and housing. Did they search online? Did they use social media? Did they rely on friends to pass information back and forth?
  • Roommate groups
    My team and I wanted to find out how many students would benefit from an app like this. Did most students have friends to live with already? Did they meet their roommates through random assignment? Were they happy with their roommates?
User research

Research Insights

After distributing the survey, we received 59 responses from both male and female undergraduate students. Our respondents ranged from freshmen to seniors and were a mix of transfer and non-transfer students.
51%
of respondents did not have friends to room with and had to resort to other means to find roommates.
69%
of respondents reported using digital means as their main method of searching for housing.
60%
of respondents who need new roommates reported relying on word of mouth to find them.
user research

Personas

After analyzing our findings, my team and I constructed seven user personas to represent our potential users and their needs. Two of our most insightful personas were Shayna Dominguez, a third-year who needs to find a new living situation on her own, and George Quezada, a transfer student looking for a more social community.

Like many students, Shayna doesn't like her current living situation and has resorted to looking for new roommates on online housing groups, which are often full of scams. On the other hand, George represents the large amount of transfer students that make up UC Davis' student body. It can be hard for new transfer students like George to find friends to room with when many students their age have already decided to live with friends that they've had since freshman or sophomore year.
Ideation

Creating a Site Map

After careful analysis of our users' insights, we decided to create a site map and lay out possible features of our app. Finding good roommates was one of the biggest concerns, so we came up with the idea of having users take a compatibility quiz that would be used to match them with others who had similar living and budget preferences.
ideation

Creating a User Flow

To further flesh out our design, my team created a task flow on LucidChart. We carefully mapped out all the paths that users could take while using the app. We created four main paths for different features of our app: a roommate-finding portion, a housing-finding portion, a messages section, and a profile section.
ideation

Concept Sketching and Brainstorming

Once we had come up with solutions to our users' problems, we started concept sketching. We wrote down all of the features we wanted our app to have and began to incorporate those features into our designs.
Iterations

Wireframing

My next step was to turn my initial sketches into wireframes on Figma. I built simple black-and-white frames, devoid of any graphics, to map out the look of each screen.
Iterations

Mid-fi Prototype

Once we finalized our vision, my team started to construct the app on Figma. We went through several stages of wireframes, from colorless lo-fi designs to hi-fi designs with thematic purple components. Initially, our roommate-matching feature was going to be built in a card deck style, similar to dating apps such as Tinder or Bumble, but we pivoted to a scrolling style that allowed users to easily go back and check out potential roommates that they were undecided on.
iterations

Usability Tests and Revisions

We conducted 9 sessions of in-depth user testing, during which we walked our users through 2 scenarios to see how easily they navigated the app. During the first scenarios, participants acted as new users to our app. We asked them to sign up, take the compatibility quiz, and explore the app's features. During the second scenario, participants acted as established users looking to fill an empty room in their apartment. We asked these participants to create a listing to advertise their open room, filter through other users and reach out to one of them on the app, and edit their personal profile.

User testing was one of the best parts about this design process. Our participants loved getting to play around with our app and we enjoyed watching them explore the features we had worked so hard on. We got to see which of our design choices worked and didn't work, and we also received some great feedback from participants.

After user testing, we made a few changes to solve our users' pain points. Our roommate preference filters were confusing and hard to find, so we streamlined the filter options and made it easily accessible via one button on the homepage. We also increased the size of the buttons and text to make them easier to click and read.

The Final Product

After 8 weeks of researching, designing, testing, and refining, our prototype was complete.

My team wrote up our design specification report and presented our work to the class.
Hi-fi prototype

The Final Design

My final high-fidelity prototype makes use of pink, green, and dark violet theme colors and rounded corners to evoke feelings of elegance, serenity, and nature. As users browse through the website, they are presented with modern-looking rectangular cards of the shop's products, which can be sorted and filtered for more specific needs. After clicking on a card, users are presented with more information about the floral arrangement, including color choice and shipping options. Users choose their preferred delivery option at checkout and can track their orders after purchase.

Searching for Roommates

During our user testing sessions, we found that users preferred to set their housing preferences independently from their roommate preferences, so we factored that into our design. The homepage has another set of filters that can be used to sort through potential roommates based on things like gender, dietary preferences, and pet-friendliness.

It's a Match!

Once users find a potential roommate that they might like to live with, they can tap on the person's profile to send a like. If the other person has liked them back, the two users will match and be able to message each other!

Listings

Rather than join a Facebook housing group and be bombarded with unvetted scammers, users who want to sublease their open rooms can make a post in the Listings tab for other users to browse through. Reputable apartment complexes can also partner with our management team to advertise their units.

Personal Profiles

With a few taps, users can easily edit their personal profiles, showcase their personalities, and change their housing preferences!

Signing Up

After registering with their UC Davis emails to verify their identity, users fill out a quick survey about their housing preferences (such as budget, type of bedroom, and distance from campus), which matches them with other users who have similar preferences. During our user testing sessions, we found that users preferred to set their housing preferences independently from their roommate  preferences.

Searching for Roommates

During our user testing sessions, we found that users preferred to set their housing preferences independently from their roommate preferences, so we factored that into our design. The homepage has another set of filters that can be used to sort through potential roommates based on things like gender, dietary preferences, and pet-friendliness.

It's a Match!

Once users find a potential roommate that they might like to live with, they can tap on the person's profile to send a like. If the other person has liked them back, the two users will match and be able to message each other!

Listings

Rather than join a Facebook housing group and be bombarded with unvetted scammers, users who want to sublease their open rooms can make a post in the Listings tab for other users to browse through. Reputable apartment complexes can also partner with our management team to advertise their units.

Personal Profiles

With a few taps, users can easily edit their personal profiles, showcase their personalities, and change their housing preferences!
Design system

Purple Theme

Reflection

Closing Thoughts

This project took place over the course of eight weeks and my team and I are proud of the work we accomplished in that timeframe. We were able to create something unique and sorely needed in our college community at UC Davis. Using research methods such as surveys and interviews, we gained a lot of insight into our users' needs and learned that many people struggled to find roommates that they both liked and could live compatibly with. Another major issue was finding legitimate housing listings and applicants.

We tackled these problems by creating roommate filters for both personality and living preferences, and allowing potential roommates to chat and get to know each other on our app, HomieHunt. Our app also requires users to sign up with their university email accounts, which keeps online scammers far away. Overall, we wished that we had had more time to conduct more sessions of user testing and further refine our app, but we are happy with our finished product and we believe in its value to our community.
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