PropertyGuru
Our UX redesign project aims to further streamline and improve the property searching experience of users for both websites and mobile applications.
Overview
Project Focus
My Role
Duration & Team
Tools
Service Design
Redesigning existing sites
Web & Mobile Application
IA lead
UX Researcher
UI Designer
11 Days
5 Members involved
Figma
Mural
OptimalWorkshop
In recent years, a surge has been seen among property technology competitors in the real estate market like 99.co, Ohmyhome, and even Carousell, which directly connect homeowners to home seekers. Proptech companies continue to disrupt the real estate industry with increasing digitisation by tapping into areas to develop artificial intelligence and virtual reality.
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Insights from our User Research revealed to us that there is a doubt between the property seekers, especially tenants, and the information provided by the listed units. This obstacle that users are experiencing can potentially cause a loss in a competitive edge.
Problem
We came up with strategies to simplify the information obstacles between the property seekers and listed units by re-structuring the layout for more responsive navigation and consumable process.
Our goal is to matchmake tenants to the right unit and landlord, satisfying both parties. In return, this will translate into greater success rates of the property sales on PropertyGuru.
Solution
01) Filter for Rent
We created a tenant-centric solution to allow customizability for renters based on their preferences, such as amenities, housing rules, and household conditions.
02) Facilities Nearby
Allowing users to search for facilities within a convenient radius around the selected property of interest.
03) Hierarchy of Information
We re-organised the content of the listed unit to improve navigation flow according to users' needs.
We also create a visual representation of information by simplifying paragraphs of texts into palatable keywords and icons for fast and easy reading.
Research
Business Model
The main service and content that PropertyGuru is providing as a B2B2C business are to deliver service and content; between clients and agents.
DISCOVERY
The Process
Heuristic Evaluation
Acting as evaluators, we based on the established principles to assess the existing website and mobile app on their user interface and usability. We assigned ourselves 4 tasks when navigating through both platforms, where I focused on the website.
Our feedback was written on our evaluation grid, before rating for each task from 0-4, with no issues to catastrophic problems. Narrowing our focus on issues that are 3 and above, the key takeaways were: Navigation, Home page search bar, search filter and error detection. Similar to the app, both Navigation and Filter were an area of concern.
Competitive analysis
We performed to analyse potential features inventory from competitor apps that could be utilised for designing solutions. Airbnb was used as a comparative analysis, where they were focused on amenities and house rules, which are suitable for potential tenants.
User Interview
To understand how people look for property in Singapore, and provide opportunities for improvement. Our target audience were participants who had experience in either buying or renting a property in Singapore. We interviewed 8 of them to figure out their buying or renting journey and understand their considerations and problems.
Synthesising
Define
Insights
After synthesising with affinity mapping, the potential trends were developed into insights.
Persona
I incorporate key insights into the pain points and goals of our two user personas, to further emphasise their end-to-end experience.
1 ) Primary persona: A tenant inquiring about a room or flat to rent in;
2) Secondary persona: A couple who is seeking to purchase a housing unit.
Customer Journey Map
We translated the findings onto a Customer Journey Map as a visual reference of a user journey from start to end, with their emotions and experience. The lowest phases of the customers’ experience were discovery and enquiry.
1 ) When they are not able to visualise the area and space of the potential listing without physically visiting the property
2) The lack of filter options to narrow down the possible listings further
3) Overwhelmed with the amount of information they have to go through
We decided to focus on the more functional aspect of the opportunities to improve user expectations.
Information Architecture
Based on our contexture inquiry, users feedback on the web flow and the misleading headers from both navigation menu and listing page.
Card Sort & Sitemap
I started an open card sort with 17 participants to understand how they would cluster the listings and menu structures from PropertyGuru. Results indicated a need to rename ambiguous headers.
Along with a need to verify the potential trends, we proposed a hybrid card sort. After analysing the results, potential trends continue to be more apparent.
Thus, I condensed the established groupings from our second card sort into our proposed sitemap (for both platforms).
User Flow
Ideation
Design
Usability testing
To experience and understand the navigation flow of the users, usability testing was conducted on 6 participants on both PropertyGuru Web and App platforms with at least 3 tasks:
1 ) Buying process
2) Renting procedure
3) Analysing process to determine the spaciousness and area of a property
From the results, 3 common topics were emerged: Virtual Tour, Finding information via filters and description, and maps.
Analysis methods
After each usability testing, we transcribe our findings into pluses/deltas to observe what could improve the users' experience. Furthermore, after each task and test, a Single Ease Question (SEQ) and System Usability Scale (SUS) were performed to gather quantitative data to monitor the progression of our prototype. A total of three Usability Tests were performed and the results can be read under "Design Iteration".
Common insights
Collective findings between Heuristics Evaluation, User Interviews, and Usability Testing shows a need to improve the filter functions to be more tenant-centric, improving the navigation flow of the sites and a better visual representation of information regarding the listed property. This summarises our research and testing findings and establishes a common ground among team members on the problems we need to improve. From here, we moved onto sketching ideation to generate some solutions.
Sketches
After each member brainstormed their ideas using a crazy 8 sketch, we compared and discussed our solution ideas. We decided based on similar concepts that were repeated in our team. Unique ideas that were possibly intuitive to users were voted with a more democratic approach.
I did a skeleton sketch for the web design as a blueprint for my teammates to follow when wireframing.
Feature Prioritisation
We compile our ideas into a spreadsheet from the competitive analysis of feature inventory and ideas generated from crazy 8. All common and potential features were identified before colour coding them into subjects, based on our common insights.
Features were planned out and prioritised accordingly to complexity and user value. Complexity refers to the difficulty of implementation using existing prototyping software, such as Figma. In contrast, user value refers to the frustrations highlighted by our targeted audience through our studies.
Storyboard
I drew out the storyboard to visualise how a user experiences the service of our proposed ideas and solutions.
Storyboard was drawn using Procreate
Prototype
Deliver
User Interface Library
With Jonathan taking lead in the UI pattern library, we followed his guideline when designing additional components to assist him in our prototype development.
Design Iteration
We could develop the wireframe for both website and app before executing our prototype based on the style guide from our agreed-upon sketch designs.
After each round of usability testing and plus/delta analysis, we further revised our prototype from version 1 to 3 (left to right). Significant feedback and design improvement have been complied in the gallery as follows.
Final Thoughts
Future Steps
Exploring other solutions that could elevate the existing solution, such as the flexibility of measuring dimensions in a 360- virtual tour.
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Part of this Service design process is reliant on the involvement of the property agents. Our process currently ends once the user contacts the property agents. The next course of action is to plan and conduct research with property agents based on the existing insights gathered from user interviews. We could understand the users' experience once the users were taken offline with property agents, and vice versa. Since, the property agents are both users & service provider (Partners for B2B2C business).
Reflection
Our biggest takeaway was constant communication within our team throughout the project. Being involved in each other's work, not only could we provide constructive feedback and discussion on the various assignments, but we were also continuously updated on our team's progress.