Reimagining the home buying journey
Through UT Austin’s course WKRM we were able to get real-world experience designing for a client
Client: OJO Labs
Research Team: Lamis Al-Wazani, Alejandra Andrade, Alex Clayborn, Dana Faist, Laura Gonima, Katherine Jones, Maricella Kaples, Arth Shah, Caroline Silva
(2021)
We wanted to focus our research and concepts on the beginning of the home buying journey. This part of the process is full of obstacles that make it more difficult for buyers. Particularly, first-time and first-generation buyers are at a disadvantage, so we wanted to delve into this aspect of the journey to find ways to build better empathy and understanding.
These were a few of our final concepts. They centered on rethinking and reorganizing the beginning touchpoint of our client’s services: signing up and creating a profile. We wanted to test better ways to pace this content while getting more in-depth information about a buyer. In theory, this could then be used to better personalize their experience.
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Research
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Prototype Testing
We took our prototypes and tested them with users. Due to COVID, we had to get creative and often did online interviews, either sharing our screen with the participant or using a program like Miro, which allows the participant to interact with and move things around in real-time as we talk.
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The User Journey
My team and I created an infographic to log our research and concepts and where they would naturally fit in to the user’s journey. We used this as a way to visually represent some of the “pains” our users felt during their own experiences and how our concepts related to these times.
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Final Concepts
Our final concept mainly targeted the beginning of the user’s journey. We felt this was a place that could be changed in the way it empathizes with the user and personalizes the experience for them. We created a new questionnaire that would be implemented when a new user creates a profile. These questions are deliberately laid out in a way to maximize relevance. The questions start off more fun, asking about the user’s dream home, before delving into financial questions. Talk about finances can discourage some first-time home buyers, so this is just one example of a deliberate decision to create a more enjoyable experience.