Mich Homes is a website for listing homes for rent that features houses, apartments, and lodges that are available within Awka City, Nigeria. Mich Homes allows users to search by specific regions within Awka City to find accommodation in their preferred location. Verified homeowners upload the details of apartments up for rent.
The goal of Mich Homes is to eliminate the gap that exists between renters looking for housing and apartment owners with vacant units.
I designed the User Experience for this product in 5 core stages; EMPATHIZE, IDEATE, DESIGN, PROTOTYPE AND TEST.
New migrants and current Awka residents find it hard to secure a conducive apartment to live in.
Design a website for locating homes for rent that features houses, apartments, and lodges that are available within Awka City.
Brand Design, UX Design, UX Research, UI Design - from concept to delivery.
In my interviews with people who said they were very likely to use a website like Mich Homes, we were able to identify the following user groups:
Group 1: Students, both old and new, who would like self contained or single rooms as their abode while schooling. These users;
Group 2: Working adults who relocated to Awka, or desire a change of apartment. These users;
I conducted interviews to understand the users I’m designing for their needs. The primary user groups identified through research were working adults residing in Awka city and fresh undergraduates.
This user group confirmed initial assumptions about Mich homes users, but research also revealed that most agents care more about their fees than giving home seekers a good experience and showing habitable homes.
Other user problems included a good number of apartments being undesirable to seekers and some landlords being nonchalant about the issue.
I carefully chose 3 competitors to analyse, which are Mitula, a worldwide property listing website that offers cars, lands and homes for sale and rent, PropertyPro, a property-centric brand that offers a wide variety of property listings ranging from Homes for rent and sales to lands for sale, and Awka Real Estate, an Awka based property listing website focused on lands for sale.
Mitula and PropertyPro are direct competitors to Mich Homes, while Awkarealestate is an indirect competitor to Mich Homes.
This holds information about the pages, and other files on the website, and the relationships between them.
Taking the time to draft iterations of each device screen of the website on paper ensured that the elements that made it to digital wireframes would be well-suited to address user pain points.
As the initial design phase continued, I used the graceful degradation approach, making sure to base screen designs on feedback and findings from the user research.
I conducted two rounds of usability studies involving 5 participants whom I chose via a survey.
Determine if users can complete core tasks within the prototype of Mich Homes website. Determine if Mich Homes website is difficult to use.
Findings from the first study helped guide the designs from wireframes to mockups. The second study used a high-fidelity prototype and revealed what aspects of the mockups needed refining.
Round 1 findings:
Round 2 findings:
Early designs allowed users to choose their preferred location from the Homepage. I revised designs to give users the ability to also search for apartments by certain criteria using a search pane.
Based on user feedback from the 2nd usability study, Mich Homes website is intuitive, easy to use, and helps accomplish the goals of the end user.
The website makes users feel like Mich Homes really thinks about how to meet their needs.
"...it's good to show that there are options of a budget, neighbourhood, all that, so that whoever is trying to pick an apartment will work within his or her means."
A designer must understand what problem they are tackling and for whom before starting the design. Your designs become considerably more effective when you are aware of the individuals you are creating them for.
