Projects
Yirental
Home Owner+Property Manager Feature for a Rental information matching platform
Yirental is a Customer-to-Customer home rental platform. Its goal is to optimize the rental experience between renters, homeowners, and property managers. Since 2017, there have been over 2000,000 users in both U.S. and overseas.
Project Type
UX contract project, mobile App UX design, prototyping & usability test.
Team
Bing Liu, Yitong Du, Daqi Shi, Mengzhe Ye, Ruwen
Responsibility
User Interview, Ideation. Persona, Prototyping, Usability test, UI Design
Duration
May 2021 - Sep 2021
Design Scope & Research
The client YiRental, a peer-to-peer home rental platform, is looking to create a feature allowing homeowners to find and choose property managers for house rental management services while also enabling property managers to find potential clients through the platform. Our work will be centered on the homeowner's user flow.
Based on the design scope from the client, our team conducted a competitive analysis and a couple of stakeholder interviews to learn about initial insights:
Competitive Analysis
Interview with Stakeholders
Design Ideation Process
Since the scope is relatively large, we tried to simplify the process to increase the efficiency for users. The team brainstormed and studied several functions:
Low-fi Sketch & Wireframe
User Flow - Property Management Service
Usability Test Insights & Design Iteration
Design Challenge #1
Homeowners cannot find their ideal property managers.
PM Card - Listing the PMs' Basic Info for Homeowners
"When I find the PM I want, I would like to chat with the property manager directly. I do not need to save my favorite or share."
- Participant 1
"I want to see not only how many projects they had but also how many years they’ve been working as a pm." - Participant 3
Before
After
Sorting & Filtering
"I want to find a long-term rental and sort by how much service fee they want." - Participant 2
"I have to tap all selected one by one to delete each filter item." - Participant 3
Before
After
Design Challenge #2
Homeowners are disturbed by messages, and hard to build trust.
In-app Chat with Disturbance Prevention
Hope I will not be disturbed by too many messages from the PMs.' - Participant 2
Before
Property owners and housing administrators can communicate openly and directly within the application.
After
Users are allowed to send just ten messages to another user before establishing a connection, in order to avoid excessive messaging. Once connected, they may communicate without limits.
Design Question #3
Difficult in locating previous quotes and documents.
Quote and Document Management under Listing Property
‘It will be good to have all documents saved in one folder and have easy access to check each document.’ - Participant 2
‘If I have multiple projects, it will be hard for me to remember which PM is on which project.’ - Participant 3
Before
Files are stored in the cart with the property manager.
After
Quotes and files are stored in 'My Listing'.
Design Challenge #4
Homeowners skip the PM service review.
Reviewing and Rating Process
"The review every month will be too much for me. I don't think I will do it every month." - Participant 1
"Filling such a long review sheet is time-consuming." - Participant 2
Before
Homeowners review PMs' performance monthly. The asses to the process is only available within the in-app chat. Homeowners are required to rate various aspects and provide feedback for the PM.
After
Homeowners will conduct assessments less frequently. The evaluation reminder appears under recent activities on Homepage. Homeowners only need to assess PMs in three categories and may include remarks if desired.
Reflections
Despite dedicating significant time to research and interviews, we failed to develop the persona promptly. This resulted in our enthusiasm for enticing features such as in-app contract signing without considering the potential difficulty of reading intricate content on a phone. UX copywriting and icons hold great importance in specific scenarios. A mere alteration of a term in the interface can shift a user's perception of a functionality.