54% of the world’s population live in urban communities
And the average marriage age for men is 29 (up from 26 two decades ago) and for women is 27 (up from 23 in the same time period). Given these trends, city dwellers tend to spend most of their twenties living with roommates. Finding and keeping a good roommate, however, gets harder as more people swarm into cities.
The Problem
It is getting harder and harder to find the right place and nice roommates to live with. This is the case especially when we talk about millennials (people born between 1983 and 2000). They want everything fast and without much of personal contact. So let’s make their life a bit easier with an App, because for every problem there should be at least one App nowadays, shouldn’t it 😜?
The Solution
It will be a low-fidelity prototype of a mobile website experience, that appeals to millennials that makes it safe to find the ideal roommate in Sofia, Bulgaria. I will make it from the perspective of person who is looking for a roommate and the apartment. Once the ideal roommate and apartment is found, additional functionality will be added to the product to make the roommate experience better.
I will identify pain points in the “finding/keeping a good roommate” journey and find ways to solve for those pain points in the design.
Initial thoughts
- According to the target group (millennials) the website should be clear and fast to go through
- No more than two task per screen – reduced friction
- Commitment and consistency – people who have taken one action are likely to take another, regardless of the size or difference in action
- Use of gamification for better engagement
- Concept of stored value – the more information people put into the product, the more their commitment increases. This creates instantly a sense of ownership for users.
The workflow can be described as follows:
The user opens the website on mobile native browser. In order to reduce friction she is presented with 3 simple sequential screens which are giving first impression that something is happening:
The prototype is interactive, because I used dynamic panels and I created variables and logic for each component:
After answering the questions user gets suggested roommates, who match her preferences. In order to continue she has to start filling her profile (using the principle of “stored value” explained above). In the acquisition phase users won’t have any rating, so I will use the level of completion of their profiles. That is how I can rate them. During entire journey the user will see in the top right corner an avatar (0%) reminding her subconsciously that her profile is empty. If she tries to tap on some of the results the website will prompt her to upload a picture (filling her profile), so she can find the perfect roommate. Some future enhancements can introduce gamification elements like “badges”, “anniversaries” and “goals” . The website should be a sort of social network where young people can find not just roommates but friends.
Prototype
My low-fidelity prototype can be found here: https://io78np.axshare.com This was my first time working with Axure, so I spent couple of hours learning it’s capabilities.
One more thing
Here you can watch a video record of my prototype:
Thank you