Building Trust In Homesharing: Transforming remus into a seamless and secure homesharing experience
Tools
Figma
Miro
Pen/Paper
Trello
Zoom
Discipline
User-Centered Design
Interaction Design
Information Architecture
Accessibility and Inclusive Design
Team
Joel Ives - Project Lead
Mariana Sanchez - Design Lead
Turner Garrett - Unicorn
Timeline
October 23rd - November 13th
With only a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) and prior feature research from the client, my team was tasked with creating the foundations for Remus’ online presence to prepare them for launch by the end of 2024.
The Goal
To deliver on the clients MVP of creating a website design that matched their guidelines while also learning what experiences homeshare users (both guests and hosts) have had with existing platforms to understand what this product for Remus can improve upon.
Process Overview
Business Research
The client was gracious enough to send over an MVP that they came up with and feature prioritization they conducted, but we needed to learn more about the space they were entering first. Understanding the homeshare landscape was crucial for us to better empathize with its users.
User Research
One of the key targets for Remus was to ensure that its users are comfortable through an email verification step. My team took to conducting a screener survey and user interviews to validate that this would make a difference to the user, and to also learn in what other ways they felt their comfort could be improved.
Design
With so many homeshare platforms already out there, drawing inspiration was easy since many of these sites share UI similarities. We knew we had to design something familiar, but maintain the key design aspect of comfortability.
Testing
By testing a mid-fidelity prototype, we were able to test whether our UI and IA worked as we hoped before creating the hi-fidelity prototype to present to the client.
Research Overview
Competitive analysis
We already knew the goals of Remus and what they hoped to achieve, so we conducted a competitive analysis to ensure that we included every fundamental option that the competitors offered. This also would give us insight into what platforms homeshare users prefer.
I helped come up with the list of features we should compare, created the google sheet for my team to track this information, and I analyzed the Expedia and Booking.com websites.
screener Survey
In order to interview homeshare users, we needed to find them. My team created and sent out a screener survey to find people that were willing to be interviewed.
I helped create the questions and order of the survey as well as posting it to my Linkedin and social media networks.
User Interviews
Through the screener survey, posting on Airbnb’s forum and through personal contacts, my team was able to interview 8 guests and 3 hosts of homeshare platforms. I personally conducted 1 guest interview and 2 host interviews over the phone
Synthesis
After the interviews my team put together 2 affinity maps, one for the guests and one for the hosts. From there, we identified the following trends:
Trend #1: There is a high level of inaccuracy with a large percentage of listings.
Trend #2: Users leave the homestay website to find out more information about the area the property is in ie. local safety, social amenities and recommended things to do in the area.
Trend #3: General lack of trust amongst guests and hosts.
Trend #4: Hosts like the way Airbnb lets them create and manage their listings the best.
Through my team's research we were able to identify key trends amongst homeshare users. Coupled with the competitive analysis we conducted and the goals we knew Remus had, we were able to focus the scope of this product. We realized that we did not need to recreate the wheel in this instance. By creating something familiar that prioritized user safety and comfort, and was simple to navigate, we would achieve our goals and the client’s goals.
Ideation
To begin ideating, our team created user flows based off of popular homeshare platforms to ensure that this product's sitemap was familiar. I created the user flows for “Creating an Account” and “Messaging a Host”.
From there, we began sketching so that every team member would get a chance to communicate their ideas, and so that we could align ourselves to the same idea through justification.
Turning those sketches into mid-fidelity wireframes was the next step. This gave us a better idea of spacing and rules that we could all follow to work collaboratively on the design. I made the Listing Details page, Message the Host page and the FAQ page.
Next, the team set about creating each page we would need for a prototype that we could conduct usability testing on. Overall, we created a total of 36 frames to have a working mid-fidelity prototype.
We needed to test our prototype to validate whether it worked with our users or not. We asked them to complete tasks that were important features on the clients MVP such as: verify your email, create a listing, find a listing to book with X number of connections. The team conducted 7 usability tests, of which I personally conducted 2.
Usability Testing
As you can see from the photo, all of our users completed each task without failure. However, we also learned key insights about our information architecture. I brought us all together as a team to discuss our findings, and we came up with the following changes
Swap the hero boxes on the homepage for better user identification of how to search listings.
Add a navigation bar at the top.
Add a filter to the map in the listings detail page and bring the map higher up on the page.
Build a more robust, “About this Area” section under the map to give different users their multiple ways to learn more about the area around their rental.
Add a sticky button for users to contact the Remus admins on every page.
And a few other minor changes of clickable links in the prototype.
Solution
By enacting the changes we noted from the usability testing, we set out to create the hi-fidelity prototype that we would present to the client. It’s a culmination of our research, the business needs and testing that ultimately gave us fantastic praise from the client. The color scheme was chosen in partnership with the client to give off a comfortable setting, utilizing greens and blues to make the user relaxed and have trustworthy feelings about the website.
Client Feedback
“This is fantastic. If I may just chime in, this is such an amazing job you guys have done with [this project]. I think you just nailed it in terms of, you know, overall sort of capturing the emotion that we wanted users to feel with the platform. Thanks so much.”