Making you feel at home when living abroad.
About
Moving abroad is an exciting adventure.
While planning is the fun part of the process, renting a place in a foreign country isn't.
Homecityhome connects students and young professionals moving abroad with their future roommates.
The Goal
Discover
Learn how people rent when moving abroad.
Define
Understand the target audience.
Design
Build a solution that meets uders needs.
The Problem
Foreigners moving abroad need a tool to help them find and rent a place in advance in which they could get to know the roommates who are living at the house before moving in.
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Competition
Idealista
Uniplaces
Spotahome
Homecityhome
Pain points being addressed
Information about roommates
Map with amenities around
Property conditions
Rental contract information
Chat with roommates
Online Booking
Photos
Calendar with availability
Mobile/Desktop version
Product Search
Finding out about current tenants
Finding things to do
Knowing what can be expect about the place
Having official information about contract
Getting to know future roommates
Being able to rent in advance
Having a better look at the place
Be able to see availability of apartment
Providing complete experience for users
Finding places in different destinations
User Interviews
Method
In order to officially kick off the project, I needed to make sure my problem was also other people’s problem, and the size of it was big enough to have a solution in place that users would be interested in using it. So, the first step that I took was to start talking to people who were in a similar situation as me - recently moved abroad to study (or to work). I put together a few questions and went after people to collect their opinions. The questions were very open, in order to make sure users didn’t feel biased nor guided to answers that I was hoping to find.
115
Online responses
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10
Personal interviews​
37
Nationalities
User’s pain points & concerns before moving abroad
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Drilling down to the questions regarding the main pain points of users, with the following information I was able to come up with my design ideas which are shared further down the presentation. These feedback below were the main pain points and concerns of users before renting something abroad shared during the interviews. After collecting this data, I was finally able to have a initial solution that could be meaningful to users according to their feedback. The takeaway are the following:
What are the most important things to know before renting an apartment/room abroad?
Most important things to know before renting something abroad
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Almost 100% of interviewees shared that finding out as much information possible about the people living in the apartment is by far the most important thing to know before renting something abroad. The second most relevant thing to know in advance is regarding to where the apartment is located (76% of users), and most importantly, what are the amenities around, such as: bars, supermarkets, metro station, etc. In third place, with 52%, information about the contract, house utilities and bilss. Half of the interviewees mentioned that without having these information crystal clear, they wouldn’t rent in advance.
What would you like to know about your future roommate(s)?
Once I found out that users were super interested in getting to know their future roommates, I then asked the following question to deep dive on the topic and see if I could find out further details. I ended it up finding out that the topics beside were the most important ones for users before renting a room abroad.
What things are most important to be nearby the apartment?
Exploring the neighbourhood!​
Users were quite clear on what matters the most for them in regards to things nearby the apartment. It was easy to spot that anything related to eating, drinking and sports were by far the things they care the most to have around their new home abroad.
Findings
Goals and Motivations
• Travel to live new experiences in a different city/country for certain period of time.
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• Travel for studies and work reasons - travel by themselves (most of the cases).
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• Searches to either live by themselves or share an apartment with locals.
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• Strong desire to know the location of the house, amenities around it, and house conditions.
Pain Points
• No access to information about who are the roommates already living in the house.
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• Takes a lot of time and effort to visit multiple places, and even more to get accepted.
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• Possibility to rent once they arrive to the new country/city.
• Lack of information about the contract, the conditions, and rules of the property.
Learnings
Before doing user interviews, my plas was to build a website/social media kind of, but after doing user interviews, I found out that most of users would rather reach out to roommates through the apartment app, mainly because it's easy to user for searching, and it's easier to chat with rommates. So learning these key points have shifted the end product that I had planned to deliver.
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Users had placed a high importance on community reviews, photos and recommendations.
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6 out of 8 users mentioned wanting "location specific" information before going on their trip.
User Persona
After having gone through a really intense process of interviews (both online and in person), I was finally able to define the user persona:
Search
Messages
Search bar
Main cities
Other cities
Favorites
Profile
Search results
Homepage
Information Architecture
Roommates Profile Flow (MVP)
Product Page
Roommate Profile
Reserve room
Roommate
Profile Page
Send message
See more reviews
Chat
Product 1
Product 2
Product 3
MVP
Using the MoSCoW method, I’ve narrowed down the essential features necessary.
• Information about roommates.
• Map with amenities around property.
• Information about property.
• Information about rental contract.
• Chat with current roommates.
• Online booking.
• Rommate's reviews.
Must-have initiatives
Roommates
information
Map with amenities
Property information
Rental contract information
Chat with roommates
Online booking
Property photos
Favorites
Roommate reviews
Product search
Should-have initiatives
Property availability
Information about neighboorhood
Calendar with availability
Price overview
Could-have initiatives
Video
call
Pre reservation of room(s)
Will not have (yet)
Interactive map
Price
negociation
File sharing on chat
Good to know!​
Sketches
Sketches displayed are only the ones specifically about the roommate profile’s user flow - MVP of project.
Wireframes
In only three steps, users are already able to visualize all the information about the roommates who are currently living at the place they are looking at.
Once users reach the roommate profile page, they are able to connect with the roommate(s) by starting chatting with them.
Prototype
Flash screen
VISUALS
Color Palette
Typography
Icons
Logo
