INTERNSHIP PROJECT
Yirental
Easy rent and easy communication
BACKGROUND
I took my internship as a UX designer in Yirental, a C2C rental startup. My work was designing 0-1 workflow and features to foster matching and collaboration between homeowners and property managers.
OUTCOME
Designed a new work flow between homeowners and property managers. Solved problems such as hard to match, hard to build trust, inefficient communication.
These solutions were handed over to development and achieved over 90.4% customer satisfaction
DURATION
3 Months
MY CONTRIBUTION
Product Analysis / User Research / Personas / Wireframing / UI Design / Prototyping
TOOL
Figma / Zoom
- OVERVIEW -
Background
Yirental is a home rental platform with over 2000,000 users and its goal is to optimize the rental experience between renters, homeowners and property managers. Although It is generally believed that the main users of rental apps are renters and homeowners, many homeowners claimed that they are willing to use a more convenient matching platform to connect with property managers.
Bussiness Reqirements
Yirental serves three main groups of people: tenants, homeowners and property managers. The better connection between homeowners and property managers is very important for better property management which could attract and retain more App users. However, the cooperative flow between homeowners and property managers has not been built yet. Therefore, this project's general goal and business goals could be:
1. Create a brand that encourages trustworthy connection between homeowners and property managers to increase user retention in this platform.
2. Attract more homeowners and property managers to sign up in Yirental.
3. Make the way of connection between homeowners and property managers stand out from other competitors.
Identify problems through user research
Since it is a new feature that hasn't been developed yet, starting from user research would be good to find an entry point to identify the problem.
- INTERVIEW -
6 Interviews / 3 Homeowners + 3 Property managers
Homeowner
Have you looked for property manager before? (If no, why not?)
How’s your experience when looking for a property manager?
Are there any challenges you met during the matching and cooperating process?
What are key features you expect for a property manager?
Tell me about a moment your property manager make you feel good, and a moment your property manager unsatisfied you.
Property manager
What percentage of your work time is dedicated to finding house owners?
What kind of tool/method do you usually use to find house owners? Could you share the process of using it?
Can you share any challenging experience you have had during work?
Is there any type of client that you prefer or prefer not to work with?
How do you screen tenants for homeowners?
Get insights and find pain points from interviews
- Main Problems -
01
How might we build trust between homeowners and property managers?
02
How might we improve the matching and cooperating efficiency between homeowners and property managers?
BUILD TRUST
IMPROVE MATCH AND COOPERATE EFFICIENCY
- FINAL SOLUTIONS -
EASY TO BUILD TRUST
Create professional profile to build trust
Trust is built on two-way selection
A. Homeowners could find detail information of property managers such as verification, location, working experience, reviews they achieved, service type.
B. Property managers could find homeowners' details and property detail information by viewing listing page.
A
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B
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Rating / Monthly Report
With notification, misunderstandings caused by forgetting could be avoided in communication
A. Homeowners could rate property managers monthly. The ratings and reviews are important for property managers to appeal new clients.
B. Property managers will get notification to write a monthly report to homeowners to update the status of management.
A
B
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EASY TO MATCH
Use search and filter system to quickly match
Save time for exploration by quick positioning
A. Homeowners could match the property managers they want more quickly and accurately by searching location and using filter system to add constraints.
B. Property managers could explore the properties they want more quickly and accurately by using the same way.
A
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B
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EASY TO COLLABORATE
Sending requests and service in the in-app chat
The listing and quote form makes communication straightforward
A. Homeowners could send the specific listing that they want property managers to manage. Property managers could quickly check the detail info from clicking on it.
B. The pre-filled editable professional quote could save time and allow property managers to reach out to more homeowners.
A
B
Easier to manage documents
quickly position files needed could improve work efficiency
A. Managing all listing-related documents in one place
B. Simply press the file exchanged in chat to do multiple operations, such as save to documents. They can also use search to quickly position files.
A
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B
How did we get there after identifying the problem?
Understand and translate problems into design opportunities
After concluding the problems, further research and brainstorm need to be done to find solutions and design opportunities.
- COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS -
Extracting design opportunities from competitors
Since there are a lot of rental platforms in the market, I tried to explore what have been successfully achieved to meet my design goals and what could be improved. I chose three representative competitors, they are: Zillow, facebook, craigslist.
- Brainstorming -
Get insight into findings and Brainstorm possible solutions
Evaluating and screening ideas
Evaluate the ideas based on the criteria of 'impact' and 'feasibility', and chose the relatively high impact and feasible ideas to do the further design.
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Concluding design directions
After evaluating and rating each idea, the team screened the ideas that were most impactful and feasible and used affinity mapping to categorize them into four design directions.
Explore the user flow
With these design directions and features in our mind, we explored different ways of the user flow to see which one works better.
Flow version 1 - Bidding system
Due to things competitors didn't do well could be design opportunities to help the product stand out, the product manager in our team suggest we try out a bidding system which came from one of the ideas we brainstormed and he thought it was innovative and has the potential to bring business value.
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However, after testing...
Iterate persona based on test findings - Simplicity and efficiency are critical
After testing the version one flow, we further narrowed down users' requirements and iterated the user personas to make them more accurate. This will build the foundation for our decision on final user flow.
- USER FLOW ITERATION -
Flow version 2 - Quote system
Based on personas, we iterated the key part of the flow, converting it from bidding system to quote system to make sure the simplicity and effiency of this flow.
Iterated final user flow
We iterated the bidding flow and applied the quote flow as the main part of the cooperation.
Ideate and Design
Based on the design directions and user flow, we started to draw wireframes to test, and constantly iterate the designs until we produce high-fidelity prototypes.
- Design and Iteration -
Drawing wireframes to test
After drawing the low fidelity prototypes, we brought them to users to do moderated usability testings. Users were asked to finish the tasks and it helped us to know the usability issues that exist in our designs.
Iterations on design
After getting feedbacks from users, I did several improvements on our design.
- IMPACTS AND SUCESS METRICS -
The impact we achieved and several metrics I think could be used to evaluate the success in the future
We found 10 homeowners and 10 property managers to do customer satisfaction tests. They were asked to rate their experience for each questions we gave and the score was 0 to 10.
- TAKE AWAYS -
What I learned
Smooth team collaboration matters. Having an internship in a start-up allowed me to join in an international team and have more opportunities to do important design-decisions. In weekly meeting, I learned how to do well-organized presentations, including the prepared documentations with what have done, what are the constraints, what should do in next steps. This could improve the communication efficiency and avoid misunderstanding.
Innovation can't detach from users' needs. It is always exciting to design new features, but sometimes the subjective innovation doesn't work. For example, we have created a different fancy user flow called bidding system which was PM preferred. However, after rounded interviews, it ended up that users found it too complicated and didn't cater to their core interest. Although this flow is innovative, it detached from users' needs and also couldn't meet business' requirements.
Constraints will influence solutions. It happens that after designing a wonderful solution but won't be approved by engineers because of the technical constraints. We have to change a more feasible solutions according to the available technique, but the older one could be the inspiration for development.
Design process is not linear, it needs constant iterations. Compared with school project, real-world project relatively is more challenging and needs rapid and constant iterations during the design process.
Details influence users' understanding. UX copies and icons can be really important in some cases. A simple word change in the interface can change a user's understanding of a feature.
What I Could Do if Given More Time
-
Do further design to complete the whole process. Due to the time limitation, several features were not completed, such as sign up page for both homeowners and property managers.
-
Further research on whether adding tenants related constraints will help better connections beteween homeowners and property managers.
-
Further research on users’ specific feedbacks on current designs and do improvements base on them.