Case Study - 2020
RATE MY LANDLORD
Summary
Rate My Landlord is an app designed to help mitigate the conflict that many landlords and tenants experience and encounter. The app not only serve as a rating platform but also a listing and a social platform.
Audience
Rate My Landlord is a personal project,
created for all tenants and landlords around the world.
My Role
UX Research
UX Design
Visual Design
PROJECT BACKGROUND
In 2017, there were just over 43 million rental households in the U.S. This means there are as many landlords in the U.S. as well. Living in a rental house can have many frustrating factors, including a conflict with the landlords. To alleviate similar problems, I want to conduct a study for a react native app to rate their landlords. With the ratings, renters will get the chance to research a bit more of a place they are trying to live.
—— RESEARCH
RESEARCH GOAL & KEY FINDINGS
When trying to answer the question "who?" I focused on those who are directly involved in the market. Ergo, I reached out to those around me who currently live in a rental property. I wanted to determine what kind of conflict arises between the landlord and tenant and how those problems are usually resolved. In doing this research, I separated the groups by ages, and within the group, I separated them again by the years they lived in rental property. My research participants were very diverse, which helped shape the app better.
One unique finding during research is that quite a number of users think that the online ratings are biased, and thus they don't trust the ratings fully. From the finding, I realized the platform shouldn't just be about rating but should be a community. With this idea, I was able to spot the functionality I needed to focus on, for example, the landlord's capability to claim their account and ask to dispute any unfair reviews to eliminate most bias out of the way.
Design: Concepts & Sketching
Before doing the research, the initial sketch was just a review platform; however, I was surprised to find that more than 85% of my research participant uses Zillow to find new rental places. This sparked an idea to integrate home search functionality and profiles for landlords to showcase their homes- kind of like a portfolio social media platform. To achieve this, I focused on designing the app with Zillow API integration in mind and the best user flow from property searching to landlord profile.
—— TEST
Validation,Usability, Feedback
For the validation test, 50% of the users failed to scroll horizontally on the main scroll page. Instead, they pressed on the right arrow icon, which was placed only to show that it was scrollable. This data led to removing the arrow and approaching a different direction. The 50% of users who failed the test do not use mobile apps as much as the other successful 50%.
After finding out that 50% of the users could not scroll horizontally for scroll, I made an iteration to the design to reduce confusion and keep the consistency for the app. I removed the arrow button (to reduce the confusion of clicking them -as they are currently used for navigation purposes in other pages of this app). I added a shadow on the right-most card to show more content in that direction, insisting on a horizontal scroll.