Every year huge population of students , young unmarried working professionals migrate to new cities in search of work or studies. The first thing they use to look for in a new city is good accommodation with all the necessary amenities at a reasonable price.
The traditional way of searching for good accommodation offline through word of mouth, classifieds and referrals was now slowly getting replaced by digital solutions, but still there lacked a one stop solution for many of the challenges faced during this phase.
Since we are in the 21st century we surely want things which are hassle-free, comfortable and is pure quality.
India’s first co-living ecosystem with affordable pricing ,packed with spacious rooms and modern-day amenities .Hassel-free accommodation search and services at one place.
Feel the community of like minded people, feel at home and enjoy a variety of fun filled activities and amenities at affordable prices and at prime locations.
Easily search and book your favourite spaces online from anywhere.
Schedule and book apartment visit to learn more about the place before confirming.
No broker fees and delays, book your place you love in advance
Once onboarded, you can find exclusive services and like minded community.
Below diagram depicts the process we followed to arrive at the soltuion:
This phase was all about getting to know the co-living industry, finding our target users and understanding the business goals.
Since this was not a real world project, I had to augment the business goals through an informal stakeholder inteview with one of my instructors.Below are the business goals that were discussed:
1. Easily find listed properties and book visits.
2. Intiutive user interface for all the services provided by the property
3. Provide a space for users to indulge in social activites to with fellow members of the property
4. One stop online solution for all business activites like payment, scheduling, on-boarding and vacating.
We talked to 10 users who fell under the category of above mentioned target users to understand their experience finding accommodation and the challenges involved with moving places. Below listed are some major challenges that we found via these interviews:
1. Amenities not worth the rent amount.
2. Broker is very hard to reach and takes too much comission.
3. Landlords intervine too much which is very frustrating.
4. Would like to be around like minded people.
5. Prefer having basic amenities like laundry, parking, recreation, social activities etc.
6. Need to invest hours and sometines entire weekend to go and search for properties in-person based on Ads.
7. Payment method is not flexible
8. Finding something for specific period of time is really difficult
9. Vacating the premises needs advance confirmation which is very inconvinient
Post the user research phase, I started empathizing with the user in order to put myself in the users shoes so that I always keep in mind the users needs and pains throughout the ideation phase.
Time to define requirements and key challenges to address during ideation phase.
1. Easy onboarding and app navigation.
2. Browse, like and book properties with ease.
3. Schedule apartment tours.
4. Read about previous experiences and ratings.
5. Provide digital access to amenities like parking, security and recreational center.
6. Easily raise, track and resolve tickets related to repairs and problems.
7. Access to third party coupons and promotions
8. easy vacating and refund.
9. provide ratings and feedback
Now, my favourite part, ideation and creating the digital interface for the defined user requirements
Creating lo-fi screens helped in quickly ideating and provided good blueprint and strategy for final designs saving time and efforts. Final designs were built in accordance with the Apple's human interface guidelines and Google's material design.
Here are a few of more of my case studies.
