When a business generates a high volume of web traffic, but can’t get users to enter the conversion funnel, usability issues are likely afoot. So for a niche business like Perch Houses - which offers co-living spaces for single women age 55 and older - multiple rounds of usability testing and intentional design decisions were necessary to get users comfortable with getting started on the site and applying for a co-living space. In this project, I worked with a team of designers as the UX/UI design lead. While assisting the research team with usability testing, heuristics, and a task analysis, I also owned all design decisions in redesigning the mobile site to create an engaging experience for target users and boost conversion rates.
RESEARCH
Heuristic Evaluation
Competitive Analysis
Task Analysis
User Interviews
DESIGN
Synthesis & Ideation
Sketching
Wireframing
Hi-Fi Test Prototype
TEST
Usability Testing
A/B Testing
Quantitative Analysis
Qualitative Analysis
ITERATE
Sitemap Overhaul
UX Writing and Content
Iteration of Hi-Fi Prototype
IDENTIFYING USER PROBLEMS
As single women interested in co-living, users need an intuitive but detailed experience in viewing and deciding on homes where they would like to co-live. The current house detail pages leave users with many questions about what it would be like to live in the house and surrounding area.
Users want a simple way to sign up without committing to a co-living application. Users are cautious about entering into a co-living arrangement, and are hesitant to enter a conversion flow that immediately commits them to the entire co-living application process.
Users want tools to evaluate their compatibility with other housemates before going further. Users are skeptical of online matchmaking systems, and want the ability to engage with other potential housemates on their own to find out if they would want to co-live together.
IDEATING SOLUTIONS
Photo carousels got in the way for users, who experienced click fatigue in going through the carousels to see every image of the house. In designing an easier way to view house photos, I created modal overlays, separated by tabs for certain portions of each house, to allow users quick and easy access to every image of the house.
My task analysis was eye-opening as to the overwhelming amount of consecutive tasks users were asked to complete to engage with the site. In my design, these tasks were broken up into several different processes, allowing users to engage with the site and click Get Started to create an account and go back to their browsing without having to commit to a co-living application.
Within the newly-created My Account portal, I designed features to allow users to interact with each other in messages and see nearby users with a high compatibility match. This allows users to get comfortable with other users as potential housemates prior to committing to co-living, as well as submitting joint co-living applications with new friends.
DESIGN
RESTRUCTURING INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE AND PROCESS FLOWS
Before moving into sketching and wireframing, the existing site was in need of significant changes to its information architecture and onboarding flow, as users struggled to find information about the available houses and were uneasy about providing a great deal of information and committing to a co-living application in the onboarding flow.
In short, users wanted to get more information before making the decision, and were not keen to being rushed into an application. In my redesign of the onboarding flow, I prioritized getting users to an account creation state with as little commitment as possible so they can continue to browse homes and decide whether to submit an application.
SKETCHING NEW LAYOUTS AND FEATURES
With a restructured sitemap and onboarding flow, I began sketching new screens and layouts for my design team. These sketches served as the basis for our initial wireframes and new features, such as the My Account portal where users could interact with each other and find their own compatible housemates.
EASY ACCESS TO HOUSE IMAGES
Modal overlays were used to replace cumbersome photo carousels, allowing users easy access to house images in a clear and organized manner so they can learn about the available co-living spaces without getting lost or overwhelmed.
STREAMLINED NAVIGATION
Navigation was a challenge in this project, as the existing site required a substantial overhaul to its information architecture. Furthermore, a significant portion of ideal users did not interact with a mobile navigation bar during usability testing. In addition to creating an intuitive navigation menu, links to other pages were included within the content of each page, allowing non-navigation users to organically browse the sitemap through the body of the web pages.
MY ACCOUNT PORTAL
This was perhaps the biggest change to the mobile site, as the all-in-one onboarding flow was broken up after users made it clear they were interested in co-living, but not ready for the required co-living commitment. In breaking up the onboarding flow to engage users with only the minimum necessary information, I created a My Account portal that allows users to complete the compatibility quiz or co-living application at a later time, as well as engage with other users to determine potential compatible housemates on their own.
PROTOTYPE
FINAL THOUGHTS
The redesign of Perch Houses’ mobile site greatly increases the value proposition of co-living to Perch Houses’ users, and implementation of the final prototype should result in a significant improvement of the site’s conversion rate. Furthermore, the introduction of a My Account landing page and options to network with other potential housemates should significantly drive user engagement across the site.
After implementation of the final prototype, Perch Houses should continue with usability testing and iteration of designs to further identify pain points and improve the user experience. In particular, Perch Houses should take an inventory of all Typeform flows to be collected from a user from inception to placement in a Perch House, and remove any extraneous information requests in the initial Get Started onboarding flow that can be collected later on in the user relationship.
Overall, I concluded this project with very strong confidence in the results that the redesigned mobile site will achieve for user engagement and conversion. Conducting two rounds of user interviews and usability testing - with rapid hi-fi prototype iteration in between - was a significant challenge over the course of a 4-week sprint. Realigning the team at an early stage in the process was crucial to ensuring we had proper time management and allocation of talent to complete an ambitious redesign, and this is something I’m proud of my team for accomplishing in quick order. A more thorough redesign could have been accomplished with more time, including an overhaul of the onboarding, compatibility, and application user flows, but this fell just outside of the scope of what we could handle in a 3-week sprint.
However, we took a focused and comprehensive approach to rapidly turning around multiple iterations of a mobile site in order to identify the biggest user pain points and develop design solutions that were directly tied to these insights. Keeping myself deeply engaged with user research insights and designing hi-fi prototypes in this timeframe left no room for procrastination or hesitation, but the resulting redesign puts Perch Houses in a strong position to move forward with vastly improved user engagement.
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