ADDING A FEATURE TO AN APPLICATION

Adding a Group Search Feature to

Project Overview

Nearly 70% of people looking to rent an apartment or house in New York City use StreetEasy or another subsidiary of Zillow Group to find their new housing. In 2021 alone, the StreetEasy app and website had around 180 million visits. While the app is widely used, it does not meet the needs of all user populations. Around 40% of renters in NYC live with at least one roommate, yet the app does not allow for a seamless search across multiple users, often causing confusion, disorganization, and duplication of effort in the apartment hunt.

Timeframe

8 weeks

My Role

UX + UI Design, Research, Prototyping/Testing, Integration With Existing Design System

Tools

Figma, FigJam, Zoom, Microsoft Word Transcription, ChatGPT

The Challenge

The Goal

StreetEasy lacks the ability to streamline and organize an apartment search across multiple people. Users currently rely on tools like shared Google Sheets/Docs and group chats with roommates to keep track of listings, tour dates, and broker contact information. These methods are difficult to maintain and place unnecessary stress on StreetEasy users to stay organized.

Design and prototype a “group search” feature that is seamlessly integrated within StreetEasy’s existing design system and branding. This additional feature should allow groups of people to maintain a shared listings page, keep track of apartment statuses, and collectively upload notes and photos following apartment tours. This new functionality should reduce the burden of staying organized when moving within NYC with roommates.

The Approach: UX Design Thinking

Empathize

User Interviews

I conducted interviews with 8 individuals who have lived with roommates in New York City. Of the 8 participants, 7 currently live with a non-familiar roommate and 1 lives alone. All users have full time jobs and make between $58,000-$160,000 annually. Users were between 23-30 years old.

My interview questions focused on three general topics:

  1. Why are users choosing to move from apartment to apartment in NYC?

  2. Have users faced challenges when moving within NYC? If so, what challenges?

  3. Have users stayed organized when moving with roommates? If yes, how? If not, what kinds of organizational tools would have been useful?

Through user interviews, several key themes emerged.

  • “I was looking to avoid an apartment that had mice. Because we had that last time. I guess this wasn't like a deal breaker, but I was hoping that we would find a place that had washer-dryer like in the building or in the unit or whatever.”

  • “You have to have a sense of urgency when touring in New York. Yeah, it might have an open house, and that might have 50 people there. If you wanna tour it, you have to get in that day.”

  • “We had a little shared Google Doc where we listed out like all the apartments that we were visiting and any information that the broker gave us about the process was for applying. I feel like, honestly, we were not that organized, if I will say so myself. And a lot of it was kind of just like in our own heads and like, texting back and forth and stuff like that.”

Define

Creating the User Persona

After analyzing interview transcripts, I pulled out key pain points and needs and generated a user persona. There are many important traits of my prototypical user, but the most critical are:

  1. My persona is moving with roomates.

  2. My persona and her roommates have struggled to stay organized during the apartment hunt.

  3. My persona needs to find housing quickly; her energy must be focused on the apartment search itself, rather than on maintaining cumbersome organization systems.

Through analyzing user interviews and creating a user persona, I defined the problem of interest using POV and HMW statements.

Points of View

How Might We

Busy New Yorkers need a better way to organize apartment listings and tours when looking for housing with roommates. It is important that this tool is integrated within StreetEasy, as users find external organizational methods burdensome.

How might we help young adults with roommates streamline the process of searching for an apartment?

Shared watch list

Creating a place where roommates can keep a shared list of apartments, including their current status (i.e., “scheduled tour,” “not interested,” “interested in applying”).

Ideate

In early stage ideation and brainstorming, three primary ideas emerged:

Upload media/notes

Allow users to upload their own photos and videos from tours, as well as notes. This information may be shared between roommates in a group, or potentially made available to other StreetEasy users.

Apartment profile

Create a form to get each roommate’s preferences for a new apartment. Using survey responses, generate an “ideal apartment profile” that helps users filter apartments more easily.

After examining effort vs. impact of the potential solutions, I moved forward with creating the shared watch list, as this seemed to solve the most critical organizational issue for users. Still, I was optimistic that I would also be able to integrate some sort of media upload or note-taking system.

User Flows and Task Flows

Through the process of creating user flows and task flows, I bridged the gap between ideation and prototyping, allowing me to develop an understanding of my next steps in the design process.

  • Screenshot of user flow

    User Flows

    I created two user flows to show how a user might engage with the new features I was adding to StreetEasy.

    Creating the user flows provided a strong foundation to understand what screens I would need to develop in wireframing.

  • Screenshot of task flows

    Task Flows

    I created several flows to show how a user would achieve specific goals within the new feature.

    Due to time constraints, I did not include the process of joining an existing group or requesting to join a group in the final prototypes. The primary pain point for users was keeping track of listings among a group of roommates, so creating multiple methods to manage group membership was not prioritized.

Prototype

Low-Fidelity Wireframes

I first sketched key screens, playing with different designs while trying to maintain the feel of the existing StreetEasy website. These low-fidelity wireframes helped me define the key tasks I wanted users to be able to complete in usability testing:

  1. Create a group search

  2. Join a group search

  3. Add a listing to the group search page

Mid-Fidelity Wireframes & Prototype

After conducting small-scale user testing of my sketched wireframes with peers in my design cohort, I moved onto creating mid-fidelity wireframes of the group search feature. This process was helpful in prioritizing features, given the time constraints of the project.

1. Apartment listing page…………………………. 2. Welcome to group search……………………… 3. Create a group search………………….

4. Our group listings……………………………….. 5. Upload group notes and media……………… 6. Manage group membership…………….

High-Fidelity Wireframes & Prototype

My mid-fidelity wireframes were received well by my design mentor and peers, so I began developing high-fidelity wireframes.

For this project, I was working within an existing design system and brand, so I had to make sure that my added feature would integrate seamlessly with the existing UI. I spent a lot of time looking at the StreetEasy website and app and replicated key components/buttons in Figma.

Test

Usability Testing

I spoke with 5 users for this formal usability testing; all 5 users currently live in NYC with a nonfamilial roommate.

Users were asked to complete four tasks using the clickable prototype of my high-fidelity wireframes:

  1. Starting on the listing page, create a group search and add members of your household to the group.

  2. From the Group Search tab, view existing notes and media on the first listing. Add a new note/rating and upload a photo.

  3. Change the status of an apartment in your group search.

  4. Toggle to the private search tab. Add a private note to a listing, ensuring that it won’t be uploaded to the group search notes.

The usability testing was successful, as all users were able to complete all four tasks. Additionally, users seemed excited about the prototype and found it to be a useful tool.

“This is pretty straightforward. This seems like it would be helpful and people would use it.”
— test participant

Iterate

User testing generated a lot of amazing ideas, but I had limited time to make changes to my prototype, so I prioritized potential revisions into three categories. See examples of “must change” iterations below.

Must change

  • Improve toggle between private and group search;

  • Add the ability to move listings from private to group search;

  • Indicate the group apartment status on the listing page.

Important to change

  • Organize group notes chronologically;

  • Add the ability to access apartment listing from group search page;

  • Make the “manage group” button more obvious.

Nice to change

  • Create a way to delete or archive the group;

  • Change images to reflect different listings in group vs. private search.

“This is so convenient! You should pitch this to StreetEasy so it actually exists.”
— test participant

Improved toggle between private/group search tabs

Added button that allows users to move listing from private to group search

Changed organization of group notes to show notes in chronological order

However, there were a few areas where users suggested improvements.

Improve toggle between private and group search.

5/5 users were able to toggle between private and group search pages, but all 5 noted that it could be clearer which tab they were on.

Introduce group search with a pop-up.

3/5 users were surprised when they were taken to the “create or join a group” page after clicking the “add to group search” button.

Generally, provide more feedback to users.

5/5 users requested more feedback when they clicked buttons on the listing page.

With user feedback in mind, I made changes and created a final prototype for the StreetEasy Group Search feature.

Conclusion

As a StreetEasy user myself (and someone who has moved in NYC several times with roommates), there were so many improvements I wanted to make to the app. Selecting just one feature to add was challenging! However, after conducting user interviews and subsequent usability testing, I am confident this feature would be widely utilized by users.

The final prototypes reflect the needs and wants of StreetEasy users. This design solves an important problem and allows users to focus their time on searching for their dream apartment, rather than wasting energy trying to maintain Google Sheets with four other people.

I was constrained by time (and trying to avoid scope creep!) in this project. However, with unlimited time and funds, I would have considered:

  • Developing filters and search features for private and group search pages

  • Adding more information to listing pages, such as integrating maps and train routes

  • Allowing users to join multiple group searches

  • Building out ways to join an existing group and invite via SMS

P.S. If anyone from StreetEasy sees this - let me know if you want to collaborate and make group search a reality. ☺