Time
2023.09-2023.12
Role
UX Designer,
Researcher
Project Type
Team Project
Team Structure
UX Designer, Engineer,
Product Manager
Tools
Figma, Protopie, Apple Human Interface Guidelines
The inspiration is from my real estate content creater experience
01 Inspiration
While working for a real estate agency company, I used Redfin, an app known for its extensive range of property listings, to find open houses. Despite its comprehensive resources, I found its user interface to be redundant and there is a prevalent issue of trust among users regarding the agents listed on the platform. So I would like to take the design challange to improve its user experience.
02 Redfin business model
Comparing Redfin to traditional brokerage platforms reveals that its win-win business model benefits sellers, buyers, and realtors alike.
03 Business opportunity
Redfin is the top-ranking website for a full-service brokerage, but it's not in the top 3 of real estate websites (which are Zillow, Realtor.com, and Trulia)
Competitive landscape
According to Statista most popular real estate website/apps reportand our survey about the most frequently used real estate app, we analyse the strength and weakness of Redfin, Zillow and Realtor.
Several user research methods were used, from user observation to dirt research and surveys
01 Observation
At first I noticed how people around me search for homes and found that they use Redfin only for its extensive listing resources.
02 First round of survey
We conducted a survey to understand users' satisfaction about real estate apps and Redfin. Over 100 participants took it on Usability Testing. We found that only 5% users are satisfied with Redfin app, which is much lower than the number of users who are satisfied with genearl real estate apps.
03 Dirt research
04 Second round of survey
A survey is created to understand the experiences and preferences of how users find homes.
From primary to potential customers, Redfin users can be divided into 3 groups based on their real estate investing experience.
Demographics of real estate market leaders
According to Home Buyers and Sellers Generational Trends Report, Despite Gen X and Young Boomers leading the real estate market, a shift is underway with Gen Z and Millennials gaining influence, the latter group showing a marked preference for conducting real estate transactions via mobile devices while in-person agents are still needed.
Primary target users, new adapters, and potential users
After 50+ user interviews we created three personas by identifying distinct user needs and behaviors within the real estate market, focusing on a sophisticated investor, a first time homebuyer, and a home browser, each with unique goals and platform interactions based on there experience.
There are solutions for all the searching experience, browsing experience and deciding experiences.
Current user flow
Searching, browsing, deciding are all very complicating and tedious, user have to set many values while searching, and keep scrolling up and down to browse the property information until they find what they're looking for, choosing agent page is really hard to reach.
What additions and subtractions should we do to Redfin?
We conducted 20+ user co-creations to figure out their preferences of current Redfin user experience and their expectations for a refined one. And we analyse the impact and effort to take of each movement, then set our priority for this design sprint.
Refined User Flow
Now, regardless of different goals, a prompt-based search engine guides users, with suggested text prompts directing users efficiently to the options that best suit their needs.
We optimize its onboarding, searching, browsing and deciding experience by integrating AI generated prompts to search bar, making the property page as simple as possible and give customer opportunities to find the agents they like.
The redesigned Redfin design system, utalizes Apple's Human Interface Guidelines, retains Redfin's signature brand color while embracing contemporary design trends to craft a more modern user interface.
Let me share some key lessons I've learned from leading my first iOS project.
