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Platform for house hunters
The aim was to create an MVP to help users find affordable rental homes in India with 24*7 agent support.
Project Overview
The product
The ghar provides an easy, fast and fun way to find and book a rental home within minutes in India with 24*7 agent support from anywhere. It provides an immersive experience for rental home.
Project duration
Target audeince
Role
Responsibilities
The goal is to create a responsive website for finding and booking rentals by providing clear navigation, agent support and offering a fast booking process with The Ghar.
We strive for a restorative experience at The Ghar. We are unable to find rental homes quickly and easily. The lack of information on the websites results in either ending the process of finding a rental or a frustrated user.
The problem
The goal
3 weeks
People looking for rental homes in India
UX researcher & designer
User research, wireframing, prototyping & iterating
User Research
I conducted interviews and created empathy maps to understand the users I was designing for and their needs. Primary user groups identified through research were working adults who are working adults and students wanting to move because of their jobs or a diploma. The first user group confirmed initial assumptions about miscommunication leading to cancelation of the booking and lack of agent support. On the other hand, the other group expressed lack of time to spend on finding rental homes.
Summary
Users' pain points
Miscommunication
Time
Navigation
Lack of communication with the host and agent which results in cancelation of booking.
Hard time to find the suitable rental homes for themselves or their family. “When I find a rental that I want to book, I want to see it’s availability, price, and book it within minutes.
Frustrated by the lack of cancelation, sometimes overbooking through the host and extending the stay. It’s hard to find and takes a lot of time.
Competitive Audit
The goal of competitive audit is to compare the user experience of each competitor’s website.
First impressions (desktop website experience, app/mobile website experience), interaction (features, accessibility consideration, user flow, navigation), graphic design (brand identity), and content (tone, descriptiveness) are the criteria used to assess the audit. Following extensive investigation and analysis, I have discovered several areas in which each website needs to be improved:
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Having trouble finding suitable rentals
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Links and buttons are difficult to distinguish
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After a while, notifications cease arriving.
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Important details should be underlined.
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Takes time to reach the goal which disinterests the users
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Lack of exclusiveness in features
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Lack of assistive technology features
Airbnb
Direct
Magic Bricks
In-direct
No Broker
In-direct
NestAway
Direct
Persona 1: Liza
Persona 2: Darsh
User journey map
My app goal is to help users easily find the perfect rental and to book it with ease. To understand user experience from start to end.
Design
User Flow
Color
Paper wireframes
5 design option for homepage. The final wireframe of the homepage is built upon the elements of each option, including the search bar, sections like ‘Discover featured localities, and ‘lease your house’.
Digital wireframes
I used Adobe XD to transition from paper wireframes to digital wireframes. After conducting a usability study after completing low fidelity prototypes, I understand how hard it is for users to find rental homes, communicate with the agent. Down below are the final low fidelity wireframes for the homepage and other various screens.
Usability studies: Findings
I conducted two rounds of usability studies. Findings from first study helped in guiding the designers from wireframes to mockups. The second study used a high-fidelity prototype and revealed what aspects of the mockups needed refining.
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Users wanted to book quickly and hassle-free
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Users wanted 360* street view
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Users wanted a better way of search function
Round 01
Round 02
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Users wanted a map view of nearby localities
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Users wanted my bookings button to be easily accessible
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Users expected to visit a house when in the same state before booking
Refining the design
Mockups
Early designs did not allowed the users to 360* street view, and book a free visit to home but after the usability studies, I added “360* street view” feature and free visit home to rental home
Before usability studies
After usability studies
Early designs did not allowed the users to easily access “My Bookings” but after usability studies, I added “My Bookings” to top navigation bar
Before usability studies
After usability studies
Early designs did not allowed users to search through filters but after usability studies, I added search feature through filters like “by type of rental home”, “by locality” and “for”.
Before usability studies
After usability studies
Early designs did not allowed users to search through filters but after usability studies, I added search feature through filters like “by type of rental home”, “by locality” and “for”.
Before usability studies
After usability studies
Clickable Prototype
Clickable prototype was created to test my ideas and validate the redesign. It was extremely helpful for me to test users on the tasks that I focused on to gain realistic insights, also understand what worked well and what requires further improvement. The prototype only covers the aspects of tasks that I planned to test users on.
Accessibility considerations
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Used icons and a menu to help navigate through the website and app.
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Provided audio-based and text-based equivalents for context. Text-based content had a colour for better visuality.
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Used map view for rentals to guide users to compare prices in the same area.
Going Forward
Takeaways
By providing online services, the website enables users to quickly find and book rental homes of their taste and on a budget conveniently.
One quote from peer feedback: “The website made it super easy and fun to book a rental home within minutes without asking unnecessary details. I might never complain about having to find a rental.”
What I learned
There were numerous difficulties in managing a challenging project by myself because TheGhar is the first responsive web design project I have completed. Initially, I could not envision how the prompt, "Design a responsive website for finding rentals," would come out, but now that I can see the efforts I have made, even though there are still flaws that exist, I am extremely grateful.
I discovered when designing the TheGhar website that the first concepts and presumptions represent only the start of the process. Each version of the website's design is influenced by usability studies, research and feedback.
Additionally, the design process was greatly simplified by research and usability studies, ensuring that every decision was made while putting the user front and centre. Focusing on users, considering their stories, emotions and insights I’ve gathered about them.