Rent a home’ is a rental home website which aims to create an inclusive space for house renters where they can connect directly with house owners to schedule house visits and finalise a home. The typical user is between 21-70 years old, and most users are working professionals. The platform aims to simplify the process of finding rental homes by providing accurate and reliable property information to users.

The rental home search process in urban Indian cities is complex and time-consuming due to the fragmented market, limited transparency, and varying user preferences. Users struggle to find suitable rental homes efficiently, leading to frustration and dissatisfaction.

Available rental home websites have cluttered designs with minimal filters, lot of ads, insufficient details, poor quality images and paid plan restriction to connect with house owners. Pricing details are often misleading with hidden charges.

Create a digital user experience (responsive website) that prioritizes user convenience by ensuring smooth and intuitive navigation, while also providing reliable and authentic information to ensure thorough screening of houses before finalizing a booking.

I conducted user interviews and turned them into empathy maps to better understand their preferences, challenges, and expectations when searching for rental homes. I discovered that many target users visit rental home websites when they relocate to a new city or area, and they do not have many offline contacts to reach out to. However, many rental websites are overwhelming and confusing to navigate, which frustrates many target users. This causes a delay in finding homes and takes more time to verify and screen properties before final booking. Available rental home websites have cluttered designs, a lot of ads, insufficient details, poor-quality images, and paid plan restrictions to connect with homeowners. We aim to provide convenience to users to ensure proper house screening before booking.

I conducted observations of some users interacting with existing rental platforms to identify common pain points, such as complex search filters and outdated property listings.

Huma Saeed is a busy doctor who needs an inclusive website with intuitive website navigation and search filters because they want to quickly shortlist a home for moving in.

To learn a little bit more about the market, I observed and analyzed several competitors and noted some of the features they were offering their users.

I created a user journey map of Huma's experience using the site to identify possible pain points and improvement opportunities.

Difficulty with website navigation was a primary pain point for users. I used this knowledge to create a sitemap with the goal of making strategic information architecture decisions that would improve overall website navigation. The structure I chose was designed to make things simple and easy.

Next, I sketched out paper wireframes for each screen in my app, keeping in mind the user pain points about navigation, browsing, and interaction around property shortlist and house visit scheduling. The home screen paper wireframe variations to the right focus on optimizing the browsing experience for users.

Stars were used to mark the elements of each sketch that would be used in the initial digital wireframes

Because Rent a home’s customers access the site on a variety of different devices, I started to work on designs for additional screen sizes to make sure the site would be fully responsive.

Moving from paper to digital wireframes made it easy to understand how the redesign could help address user pain points and improve the user experience. Prioritizing useful button locations and visual element placement on the home page was a key part of my strategy.

To create a low-fidelity prototype, I connected all of the screens involved in the primary user flow of shortlisting a property, going through virtual tour and scheduling an appointment for house visit.

At this point, I had received feedback on my designs from participants about things like placement of buttons and page organization on landing page, login requests and applying filter. I made sure to listen to their feedback, and I implemented several suggestions in places that addressed user pain points.

I conducted two rounds of usability studies. Findings from the first study helped guide the designs from wireframes to mock-ups. The second study used a high-fidelity prototype and revealed what aspects of the mock-ups needed refining

To make the browsing experience hassle-free for users, I ensured that users get login/sign up prompt when they shortlist a property or when they are trying to schedule a house visit. This will help them to track the properties they’re interested in through a profile dashboard.

My hi-fi prototype followed the same user flow as the lo-fi prototype, and included the design changes made after the usability study, as well as several changes suggested by my friends and peer group.

The final high-fidelity prototype presented cleaner user flows for finding rental homes from start to end. It also met user needs for correct and up-to-date information, advanced search filters, connecting with homeowners, and accessibility in terms of colors, font size, and the use of alt text for images.

Developed a visually appealing and consistent brand identity for Rent a Home that resonates with the target audience. For example, using a combination of warm colors and modern typography to convey trust, professionalism, and reliability.

Impact:

I gathered feedback on the overall user experience, ease of use, and satisfaction with features such as search, filters, and property details. Users appreciated the fact that the platform offers detailed property information, high-quality images, a chat option, and virtual tours. This will help users gain a comprehensive understanding of the properties before scheduling viewings. Our target users shared that the design was intuitive to navigate through, more engaging with the images, videos, and descriptive text, and demonstrated a clear visual hierarchy.

I learned that even a small design change can have a huge impact on the user experience. I tried to create a simple design where users feel free to click and explore any space they like.

The most important takeaway for me is to spend considerable time identifying the real needs of the users and brainstorm harder to solve the problem in a simple, intuitive way. Attention to detail, consistency, and a mobile-first approach were essential in creating a polished and responsive app interface.