Case Study: YARA (room/roommate finder)

Role: UI/UX Designer & Researcher

Team: Individual

Duration: 3 weeks

We have all directly or indirectly experienced the dilemma of the room/roommate hunt.

It might have been that time in university when you desperately needed a roommate to split the bill of a space you found or the search for an affordable room closer to your job.

Living with a roommate is an interesting experience. There are many questions that could come up before you meet your new roommate for the first time. What are they like? Am I going to get along with this person? Are they going to clean up after themselves? Can they cook? Will they cook for me(hopefully). Living with someone whether you know them or not, can sometimes be challenging.

Problem Statements

How can users spend little time searching for places/people with matching expectations?

How trustworthy are the prospective roommates?

How can users arrange a viewing at an appropriate time?

Assessment and Research

To reach set out objectives, I designed a survey for each target surrounding the problem statement and sent it to friends and acquaintances matching these profiles.

— When looking for a room, what is your ideal search channel?

—What is the main problem you encounter in your search?

— Do you have specific reservations for a potential roommate?

— How successful do you consider your search process?

—What features would you recommend to make your search easier?

Here is what I learned from the 12 respondents.

Statistics of findings.

To help in this task, I have extracted insights from the results of the survey and built a compatibility chart filtering out pain points and expectations.

Pain points & Expectations

Top criteria:

1. Time and effort
2. Compatibility
3. Filtering
4. Concise Information

Besides these findings, I made a meaningful discovery that was not translated into this exercise.

Contrary to what I thought, landlords are generally not involved at the beginning of the process to find their new tenants. More than time concern, the landlords delegate the candidates screening to current roommates to make sure they have matching personalities.

Personas

From the interviews and findings, I have developed personas for both the perspective of a room seeker and that of a person looking for a roommate to guide the design decisions.

Tasks flow

I have also designed the core task flows with the 2 targeted users in mind.

• The room search flow, for the room seekers
• The roommate search flow for the current tenants

The goal was to identify where in the search experience the pain points occurred. Based on our research discovery, I have mapped out the roommate search flow by starting with current tenants and not the landlords.

Design

Below are some low-fidelity wireframes I sketched to ideate the user journey.

High Fidelity Screens

Initially, the user witnesses the onboarding process and then moves forward to sign up on the platform. The Sign-Up and Login pages features social integrations option for a simplified process.

Once the user signs up using their preferred medium and basic details, they proceed to a specific set of questions, according to which a recommended and filtered feed is derived.

Now, here in the first scenario, the user is looking for a roommate, so the user is given a set of questions which is related to the roommate experience.

This allows for a tailored and filtered feed of appropriate roommates.

In the second case of a person looking for a room, the same format of questions is asked with alteration to accommodate location, budget, and overall creating a better experience for finding a room.

The questionnaire is concluded by asking the users about their interests and a bio stating about themselves.

Below we have different feed and recommendation screens for users looking for roommates and users looking for rooms.

Next, we have different views of the profile depending on the viewer.

Lastly, there is the messaging screen

Messaging screen

Extended version of the screens with scrolls.

Takeaways

It has been such an interesting journey to take on this project.

This project was my first exposure to the full UX design process, and my biggest takeaway from this project is empathy — understanding the users’ pain points and fully implementing my creativity to come up with a solution.

The research phase was also essential to identify user expectations and frustrations. This was how I discovered two important discoveries. Contrary to what I thought, landlords are rarely involved in finding new tenants for their property. I also discovered how important communication was in the room search process, or in roommates’ daily life.

Improve Experience

I think the application could evolve and facilitate users’ life after getting a room or roommate. Users have mentioned that features that help them manage their common expenses with their roommates (expense management system) could be adopted.

Overall, I had a great time with this project and I enjoyed digging into my creative side while designing my own mobile app!