RentAp

User experience designer designing the application from conception to delivery, conducting interviews, wireframing, prototyping, conducting usability studies, accounting for accessibility, and iterating on designs.

The users were using general-purpose ad platforms and general real estate websites, and they were not happy with the experience while using these platforms because of data overload.

Make a website that is dedicated only to rental apartment finding and reduce the time needed to find one. 

I conducted interviews with users that are part of the target group and identified the trend where users are getting overwhelmed with information while trying to find the proper apartment to rent, so they were looking for a different experience which included making a dedicated website for finding only rental apartments.

As a first step in creating personas and in order to understand and prioritize user needs, I created aggregated empathy maps that synthesizes themes seen throughout specific user group.

Create a website that, because of its purpose, has a lot of content that has to be easily scannable and which will provide users with the information they are looking for without frustrating them while trying to find that information.

It was a challenge to decide how much information to provide on the home page. I made fewer categories than I should have, which was later corrected by testing with the users.

Considering the pain points identified during research, I created paper wireframes to start the design.

The idea to make finding apartments easier materialized in two major parts of the design: the search field and apartment categories. Both of them are equally important for enhancing user experience.

Being able to resize the website to fit any screen is very important, considering how many different devices people use in everyday life.

To create a low-fidelity prototype, I connected all the screens to the main user flow and made four entry points into the flow to provide more options from the homepage.

I received feedback from my peers concerning button placement on some screens, so I changed it accordingly.

Usability study findings indicated that for ease of use "Recently visited" category should be added, that search should be available on all pages, and that a date picker option should be made. 

My goal was to enhance user experience using received feedback, so I added "Recently visited" category.

I learned that trying to design for a broad audience is quite a challenging task, but at the same time, these challenges are what push us to create better designs that can considerably improve user experience.

After this initial phase, I plan to conduct a follow-up usability study with the enhanced version of the website, draw conclusions from that study on what part has to be iterated on and implement the changes and implement or change elements to increase accessibility.