RoomMatch

RoomMatch is a passionate start-up for finding people roommates. They want an app. They approached our team with a vision to enter the mobile market and become best in class. However, there were underlying usability issues (among a litany of other things) to solve before that could even begin to happen.

The Vision

From the very beginning, our mission aligned with RoomMatch’s core value: to connect people with housing and roommates. We wanted to prioritize:

  1. Users and their values

  2. RoomMatch and their business goals 

The Challenges

Design a Mobile App for RoomMatch

Once we’d been briefed about RoomMatch’s intentions to enter the mobile market, the implications of designing an app would include a user interface, navigation bar, and a re-optimized onboarding process for the new mobile platform.

Design for RoomMatch’s Target Demographic

RoomMatch wants to be for everyone, but they’re interested in mainly tapping into the off-campus housing market for students.

This would require pulling research from mainly younger demographic in their late teens to early 20’s and putting in an extra effort to find users in that demographic.

Design to Solve RoomMatch’s 50% Drop-off Rate

RoomMatch faced an issue where half of their web users were dropping off at some point. The implications here suggest that we have to delve into the core issues that currently stand with RoomMatch’s onboarding, user interaction, and overall task flow. 

Design for iOS & Human Interface Guidelines

RoomMatch didn’t just want to be mobile’s best in class when it came to finding people rooms and roommates — they wanted launch from Apple’s App Store first.

This signals the need to prioritize Apple’s Human Interface guidelines, model the prototype around iOS, and design the UI to mimic and represent Apple’s signature masterclass in interface design.

Research. Lots of Research.

It was important to our team and RoomMatch that we first understood our landscape, field, and competitors before seeking to mirror best-in-class mobile app leaders in other markets.

Our Competition in the Web Market

The Web Market: A Feature Inventory Comparison

Our Prospective Competition in the Mobile Market

The Mobile Market: A Feature Inventory Comparison

Like we did with RoomMatch’s web competitors, we looked at the current feature inventory RoomMatch users would EXPECT their mobile app to have in comparison to current real-life mobile app features and offerings.

To create a best-in-class mobile experience for users, we looked to best-in-class companies who thrive in their respective markets to see how they utilize feature inventory to cater to users and their needs. 

Airbnb, Hinge, SoSynced (Features).

User Research

Because RoomMatch had no prior user interviews, usability testing, or any indication as to how their users felt about RoomMatch, it was my job to oversee the research that would fill in those blanks.

Over a three week sprint, the following research accumulated from 33 users who we interviewed, polled, tested, and surveyed.

Current Site Usability Tests

Before we could start designing, we felt it crucial to unlock why the 50% drop off rate was occurring.

In order to do that, we needed to understand in real-time why users felt liking leaving RoomMatch. So we decided to have people onboard RoomMatch for the first time to understand where and why the drop off might be occurring. What we found was …

LuckyOrange.com: Analytics, Recordings, Heat Maps

LuckyOrange.com’s Web Analytics feature was a great source of research for giving us a better understanding of our users, providing us their locations, the traffic to the site, and the main sources where their users found the site.

These web analytics showed us that (1) 58% of users were US based and (2) Reddit was the primary means of discovery for users.

As of March 2021, Statista published that users in their twenties accounted for almost two-thirds of active Reddit accounts in the United States. An already serendipitous link between RoomMatch’s ideal target demographic and the user base they already have, our job is made just a little easier as we prepare to survey college-age students.

User Demographics and Interviews

For our user interviews, we set our sights on a target demographic of 18 - 24 year olds, who were either currently in college or recent graduates that have lived off campus with roommates, to align with our challenge and business goal of designing for students.

After reporting these troubling findings to RoomMatch, invigorated by a possible link between a dreadfully long and tedious onboarding process, RoomMatch still wasn’t convinced. In our meetings, it seemed like our client was clinging to design decisions made without accessibility or the user in mind.

As Lead Researcher, I decided that in order to better advocate for users, we needed more preliminary research. In an open card sort, this unmoderated sorting test asked participants to categorize each step of the RoomMatch onboarding process by their level of importance. 

The results from our results matrix confirmed not only my team’s research, but gave a clear idea to RoomMatch what users find most and least important. A lot of the cute, novel, “out of the box ideas” RoomMatch thought users wanted in the onboarding process actually proved to be distracting and unnecessary by people who I polled.

These results cut through the fat of frivolous, user-negligent design and showed that there was a legitimate problem that we needed to solve if we were tackle the 50% drop-off rate.

We had the research, we had the insights, we understood the problem, and took the requisite steps to empathize with the user’s pain points. 

With these bases covered, it gave us the liberty to move onto the next steps…

The Blueprint

Affinity Map

Because we still weren’t sure about the scope of what our client really wanted, I made the decision to separate user interview and current site testing insights into two categories: Housing Insights and Roommate insights. 

This way, we could cover user representation more intentionally if RoomMatch wanted two separate user flows.

Dennis is Born

Stats and qualitative anecdotes weren’t going to be enough to bring our research to life — we needed a welcoming and relatable face to represent the cold hard numbers and insights that we'd compiled thus far, so we drew together the data we had gathered and from there…

Dennis 1

Dennis’s Problem, and How We Might Solve It

Dennis needs a system that allows them to quickly find a roommate who is both safe and matches their preferences because they want to find the most ideal living situation.

With that in mind, how might we…

  1. Help Dennis find a roommate that matches his preferences?

  2. Provide a way to show Dennis verified and trusted roommate options?

  3. Allow meaningful interactions to gauge the compatibility between two roommates?

To recap so far:

We defined our users and how they feel, complied their insights and made a persona out of them, then we defined the problems and needs for them, and finally hinted at some solutions.

We can finally design the damn app now.

The Renovation

Low-Fi Sketches

After synthesizing all our research, we began ideating and sketching together as a team in a design studio.

Based on our research from our competitors, interviews, current site usability tests, and LuckyOrange analytics, we had a solid foundation to substantiate our designs for RoomMatch’s mobile experience.

Here’s one of the early Lo-Fi sketches I drew that highly influenced the final look of the app.

Mid-Fidelity Prototype

Once we landed on a workable layout and interface that worked for RoomMatch’s existing language and feature inventory, we converted the low fidelity sketches into a testable, mid-fidelity prototype.

Test the App (Mid)

Mid-Fidelity Prototype

For the Mid-Fidelity prototype, we focused on creating an onboarding experience that was functional, intuitive, and didn’t exhaust the user at the end.

This focus set us up to accomplish another UX Challenge of solving the 50% drop-off rate, which was happening primarily during the onboarding process. We wanted the user to feel excited after signing up and eager to search for a compatible roommate in the app!

Qualitative and Quantitative Insights

As for how people responded during usability tests, I collected and compiled qualitative and quantitative insights and data.

The Open House

Hi-Fidelity Prototype

With a curated, tailor-made user experience for RoomMatch’s demographic, moving onto the Hi-Fidelity Prototype meant incorporating all we discovered about the user’s wants, needs, and how to address their pain points along the way into our design.

Test the App (Hi)

Hi-Fidelity Prototype

Here’s some features that the Hi-Fi incorporate into the app’s overall experience…

Qualitative and Quantitative Insights

As for how people responded to the Hi-Fi Prototype, I collected and compiled qualitative and quantitative insights and data.

Let’s start with the qualitative data.

All Users felt that...

  • The app was familiar (like a dating app)

  • Onboarding was straightforward and smooth

  • It was safe to share their information

  • The scenarios were helpful

Next Steps and Final Thoughts

Next Steps

  • Create a way to save and quit during the onboarding process if users want to close out of the app and finish it later

  • Change colors and contrast to abide by WCAG, and generally prioritize accessibility for as many user as possible

  • Build out the filters on the roommates screen

  • Design around a secondary user persona and journey map we created

Final Thoughts

This was my first “real world” client experience — and it was so gratifying, humbling, tiring all in the best way possible. Seeing how important prioritizing others in every facet of the sprint just reminded me everyday why I risked everything to veer into this field. 

Facing friction, resistance, and pushback from RoomMatch made us that much more passionate to advocate for user’s needs at every and any juncture in the design process — a human-centric approach is central to business strategy and must be appreciated as such.

Another huge takeaway at the end of this project was understanding that being a designer doesn’t mean being the person slaving away in Figma the most. It means approaching what we had with fresh, curious eyes each time to solve problems collaboratively with your team.

Most of all, working with RoomMatch galvanized what I love so much about being a UX Designer: dissecting user problems and working in a team to help users and business goals at the same time.