Apartment List is an apartment rental app that connects prospective tenants with their new homes by providing personalized matches catered to their needs. With more than 60% of renters looking on mobile devices for places to rent, I redesigned the Apartment List app to make searching for apartments a more enjoyable and seamless experience.
Role
User research, interaction, prototyping, usability testing, visual design
Duration
4 Weeks (80 Hours)
Project Overview
Background
Getting matched through Apartment List with relevant apartment options felt like the new tinder of apartment renting.
Current users felt that the app had a cool concept, but required a tedious process of sifting through listings that didn’t match their criteria. Users were left tapping into competitor apps to find what they were looking for.
This process became even more stressful and time-consuming as a result of an inefficient interface and limited capabilities.
Problem
51% of American renters surveyed stated that searching for an apartment to rent took longer than anticipated, causing them financial burden with 20% of them having to live in extended stay hotels.
My goals:
Streamline the process of searching
Give tenants more control over looking through listings
Having readily available information to help tenants make more informed decisions
Solution
Redesigning the interface to allow renters to quickly search through available listings and find their desired apartment. Providing renters with more tools and enhancing existing features makes it easier for them to find what they're looking for with less stress.
Research
Defining the Problem
Before diving into the project, I conducted usability testing to analyze how users were navigating through the current app in order to determine areas of friction and observe how long it took to complete each task. I also read through customer reviews to further gather feedback on the current app.
Some key takeaways I found:
Searching for an apartment takes too long
Too many outdated listings
Filters are difficult to change and limited
Shortlist gets disorganized and can’t be sorted
Button actions can’t be undone
Lacking map makes it difficult to choose specific neighborhoods when unfamiliar with name
What makes others better?
Users became frustrated by the extensive browsing of irrelevant listings and the lack of features in the app and turned to other apps that were more effective for their search. Identifying the approach of existing apartment rental apps was crucial to determine what made them more successful.
Some key features include:
Factors that influence their search
To determine how I could streamline the search process, I spoke with users and conducted a survey to learn about the factors renters consider when looking for an apartment.
Insights I found:
Using my research findings, I created a customer journey map to visualize all the moments users felt frustrated during the rental process. These insights helped me define opportunities to improve their experience.
User renting an apartment
Ideation
Highlighting problem areas
With a clear understanding of the pain points of my users, I mapped out the current information architecture of the app to identify where the app had limitations and what was causing the search to take longer. Then, I proceeded to sketch out different layouts of each screen.
Discover Screen
Iteration #1
Iteration #2
Here are the design tradeoffs:
Iteration #1: more difficult to see criteria options
Iteration #2: highest visibility for criteria options, easily toggle between matches and map view
Iteration #2 allows for more flexibility to switch between different views and to explore different options of criteria ultimately speeding up the search process.
Here are the design tradeoffs:
Iteration #1: see more details of each listing
Iteration #2: less visibility of details and have to click into each listing to view more details
Iteration #1 because it allows users to quickly see details of each listing and why they added this to their shortlist.
Shortlist Screen
Final Screens
Discover
Users felt limited with the filtering options available and had a hard time changing the filters. Additionally, they were frustrated with the amount of outdated listings they had to look through.
Listings
Users felt that browsing through all the listings was a waste of time, especially when many were irrelevant.
Discover
Users were required to scroll all the way down and click through all disliked listings.
Shortlist
Users had trouble comparing apartments in the same area and organizing their shortlist
Reflection
What I learned
No need to reinvent the wheel
Looking into competitor products and discovering their strengths and what makes them successful can help you determine what your product needs and how you can differentiate yourself to build a competitive advantage.
What I would do differently
Feature prioritization
After listing out all the features I wanted included in my design, it ended up being a long list. I wanted to implement all the essential features rather than prioritize them. Thinking about having a limited budget and time constraints could’ve helped me narrow down the scope.
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