UniRoomy
UX Design ︲ UI Design ︲ UX Research
Mobile App
2021
About UniRoomy:
UniRoomy was an app designed to improve the student accommodation experience nationwide, by providing students with transparent, valuable and accurate information, enabling them to make the accurate and informed decisions on choosing where to live during their studies.
The Challenge:
The high-level goals were to:
- Create a comprehensive journey for users that guides them from accommodation discovery to finding flatmates and signing contracts.
- Provide access to transparent, valuable and accurate information so students can make more informed decisions when choosing University accommodation.
- Become the go to platform for everything related to student accommodation discovery.
My Role:
While working at UniRoomy I was part of the Product Design team which consisted of four other people and worked closely with the with the founder in order to understand the brand/company and successfully communicate their stories and ideas while reaching the right audience. While working with this team I received constructive feedback from fellow designers and potential demographic in order to improve and get other perspectives about what I was designing and make sure that the designs fit within the companies design guidelines.
Main Tasks:
- Customers Insights & Ideation
- Building the Project Vision
- Sketches
- User Scenarios
- Wireframing
- Interactive Prototype
- Developing the User Interface
Design Process:
When I embarked on the project and found out I would be working primarily on the housing aspect of the app, I decided to conduct user interviews alongside desk research to help understand what users would want from a student housing app. I felt that by getting hold of this information early on in the process would give me an idea on what the users would want me to design and prototype before I start doing the nitty gritty. I, alongside another designer on the team, checked out other competitor apps, which allowed us to see what worked well and what didn’t within this app setting. From this, we noted that a lot of similar apps were targeted at different types of users. It was this research that helped me narrow down which users our app should be targeting.
After analysing all of the data, I began to develop solutions and sketch out the interface while keeping design principles, such as contrast, hierarchy, and feedback in the forefront of my mind, alongside the app founder’s brand attributes. Following that, I concentrated on creating user flows and wireframes to allow me to iterate more quickly through ideas and see what worked and what didn’t, by showing them to other designers and target users.
User Interview:
User interviews are a fundamental user experience method because they assist in understanding the user’s goals, desires, and pain points. Because of this, I decided to approach ten people for interviews. I chose this number after reading Donald Norman’s article “Why You Only Need to Test with 5 Users,” which stated that the first 6 users can learn about 80% of the errors, problems, and behaviour. I felt that this would provide sufficient data and inputs to generate concepts and hypotheses. However, after the conceptualisation phase, I put the prototype through testing with other users, which enabled me to gather further feedback and validation.
Interviewed Audience:
Everyone interviewed for this project were current students at either Lancaster or Manchester Metropolitan Universities. I did this, because the app founder targeted these universities for the original launch of the app when it was completed. However, as we got further through the process, we decided to extend these interviews to include university students from across England. We found that this was very useful for the strategic side of the app as there were plans to eventually roll it out nationwide.
The interview took approximately 15 to 20 minutes and consisted of leading questions which allowed us to gauge the core of what users were looking for from the app and highlight their pain points when selecting university accommodation. These questions were:
- What was your experience like when selecting accommodation for the University?
- What frustrates you when looking for student houses?
- What information do you look for when deciding on which house to live in?
- What would make choosing student housing an easy and stress free process?
Once the interface was ready, I took feedback from four other fellow designers in order to understand the experience gaps. Validation, although part of my usual design process, would be a post-conceptualisation and interface step.
Customer Insights:
After analysing the interviews, despite the amount of generated data, this was the most relevant information for decision-making in creating the solution:
Overall, the majority of students are looking for affordable accommodation with functional amenities. While companies are pouring millions into developing student housing with luxury amenities in major UK cities like London, Manchester & Newcastle to attract the high rent market studies show that the most undergraduates are increasingly likely unable to afford the high prices. Students instead go off value on functional amenities, such as wi-fi, laundry, utilities, dishwasher, and parking over pools, fitness centers, and hot tubs. This is just one factor that contributes to higher vacancy rates in newer developments.
Desk Research:
In addition to conducting interviews, I also researched the data and habits related to other current accommodation application services on offer for university students. I did this in order to gain an understanding of competitor behaviours and benchmark innovative services aimed at students. I realised, after analysing the data, it showed that most of the apps on offer to students are very similar to one another, which was something we wanted to avoid in order for UniRoomy to stand out from the competition.
The article, ‘Best Student Accommodation Apps in the UK’ published by Rooftop Living, brings together relevant examples to the discussion such as, Amber Student, SpareRoom, RightMove and StudentPad. All of these are major players in the student housing market and contain thousands of properties targeted at students all over the UK on their apps. This proved to be the biggest threat to UniRooomy as, when we launched, we did not have as many properties as our competitors. This was due to the app initially being launched in only two university towns.
Market Insights:
A record-breaking 39% of all 18-year-olds in the UK submitted an application to start studying at UK universities in September 2021, according to data from UCAS, with just over a fifth of applicants from outside of the UK. Quite rightly, increasing participation rates are viewed as a real strength for the UK student accommodation sector. From an accommodation perspective, most markets remain structurally undersupplied, and investment, from a diverse range of funders, has continued apace.
Affordability is the number one issue facing students and value for money is the most important factor influencing decisions on where to live. For universities and accommodation providers, this means delivering the highest quality accommodation possible within the constraints of viability. Operators must be quick to identify, and prioritise the factors in accommodation that are most important to students, such as good wi-fi, location, and transport links.
Alongside affordability and having the most important amenities, students are also looking for convenience. This is why student housing is increasingly being positioned at the center of hospitality, and commercial spaces like restaurants, bars and shops. This can add to the sense of community and quality of accommodation that most students are looking for.
Concept:
To improve the student accommodation experience, nationwide, by providing access to transparent, valuable, and accurate information, which in turn, empowers students to make accurate and informed decisions when choosing their accommodation. This will not only help them be more productive in their studies but will help them feel more safe, happy, and more comfortable in their space.
Tone of Voice:
One of the main things we wanted to communicate to our users using the app is that we wanted them to feel safe and comfortable talking to us about their experience and needs. Because of this, we decided that at the end of the tenancy, we would give students the opportunity to anonymously review their properties, without the fear of being harassed by landlords, whilst also collecting rewards for doing so. Our number one goal was to make their student accommodation experience as easy and pleasant as possible and for us to achive that goal, we needed to have their trust. This meant that we had to be impartial and fair to every party involved, whether that be landlords, students or parents in order to gain that level of trust and reassure them that we have their back in tough situations.
Wireframes:
The wireframes were created to build the structure and architecture of the information and only then go to visuals and interactions.
Property Matcher:
This section was where users could see all of the properties that were available for students to rent. According to the research we conducted with the target demographic, being able to filter the houses down based on factors such as price, number of bedrooms, and the commute was important so that they could find the most suitable house as quickly and easily as possible, without having to filter through each property to find one that suited their needs. The user could see all available properties that fitted their filtered criteria by going through various filters and clicking ‘Go’. From there, the user could then scroll through the results and click on the properties that appealed to them to learn more about it. By clicking on the individual listings here, the user could then find important information such as the number of bedrooms and bathrooms, commute times, and key ratings, alongside feedback left by previous tenants at the property. These reviews could be read in full by clicking on the review button at the top of the page, which allowed users to see what other tenants have said, along with ratings left for each room in the property.
Find a Review:
Because UniRoomy is a student housing platform, aimed at providing students with transparent, valuable and accurate information, we wanted students to be able to see what other, previous tenants thought of individual properties, to allow them to make informed decisions when choosing a property. That is exactly what the ‘Find a Review’ feature allowed students to do. All users needed to do to find a review was enter the address of a property they found in the ‘Discover Page’ and select the corresponding property from the ‘Results Page’. In turn, this brought up all reviews that had been left by previous tenants of the property. When users land on the ‘Review Page’, summaries of all previous reviews will appear; however, if users wished to read full, specific reviews, they could do so by clicking the link at the bottom. This shows the user the review in full, along with ratings of bedrooms, bathrooms, living spaces and landlords, all rated on a scale from 1-5.
Leave a Review:
To make the app as transparent as possible, we decided as a group that the best way to do this was through the use of peer reviews. At the end of a tenancy, users would get a notification asking them to review the property. To ensure that the information provided was as accurate as possible, the reviews would be anonymous so that users would not have to worry about upsetting landlords or potentially being harassed by them. To make it a worthy exercise for users, we also added incentives for providing reviews. These included unlocking achievements and getting rewards. For people looking at properties in the future, these reviews could be vital in their decision-making as they have access to information that is not usually available to them and they get an accurate image of what living in the property looks like.
Achivements & Rewards:
In order to ensure the app was as transparent as possible, we wanted users to have the ability to review the student houses they have lived in. To do this, we decided that each time they review a property, refer us to a friend or leave a review, they could unlock achievements and gain rewards. This allowed students to feel that they were being rewarded and that these exercises were a worthy use of their time.
Achievements were unlocked by users completing tasks such as completing their profile, reviewing properties, reviewing the app on the app store, and referring a friend. By unlocking an achievement, they also received tokens that could be used towards further rewards within the app. Therefore, more achievements meant more tokens they could spend. Users could also see all the achievements they have unlocked, as well as the ones that they still could unlock, by going on to the ‘Achievements’ page from the user’s profile.
Rewards ranged from discounts at popular student bars and shops, to entry into sweepstakes with far greater prizes (such as Cash Bonuses). The user could buy these rewards with the tokens collected by completing tasks within the app and unlocking rewards.
Colours:
Before joining the company, the brand guidelines were already set by the founder, along with a previous employee and they decided to pick a bright and inviting tone. This was carefully chosen to represent the company’s values and beliefs
The main colours in our palette were shades of bright purple and a peachy orange to break the white and make the brand youthful and remarkable.
Green was added as well to give the interface a more playful and vibrant look as well as contrasting well with illustrations.
For text, black was brought in to ensure reading and contrast, thus reaching appropriate levels of accessibility.
Typography:
Due to the app being targeted towards students, making sure the app looked good throughout was important to encourage repeated use. Because of this we spent a bit of time making sure we had the right font that fit with our style guides while also being youthful and looking good. Therefore, we eventually came to the decision to use the Circular Standard typography which marries purity with warmth and strikes a balance between functionality and being modern.
other Work
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