OVERALL
Supporting agent efficiency
Apr-Jun 2022
Ship Date
UX|UI design
Competitive analysis
User research
Product strategy
My Role
Mobile App for Nova Land Property
Industry
Team
PM，2 devs, Marketing,Ops
Tools
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Project Overview & Strategy
The iHome app is a rental property management mobile application designed for Hova Land agents in the Bay Area. Its primary goal is to modernize and streamline property management processes by offering a suite of tools that enhance the client/user experience and improve agent efficiency. By digitizing key aspects of the agency process, the app enables seamless interactions between tenants and property managers, addressing common pain points such as communication delays, manual rent payments, and inefficient maintenance request handling.
Challenge
Design an inclusive, user-centered mobile app that digitizes property management processes, streamlines communication, and provides real-time tracking, while ensuring an intuitive experience for a diverse audience and balancing thorough onboarding with usability.
Business Goals
Improve client/user experience: Create a more user-friendly and efficient experience for tenants interacting with Hova Land and managing their rental properties.
Support agent efficiency: Streamline processes and provide tools for Hova Land agents to manage tenant requests and communications more effectively.
Digitize agency processes: Transition from manual, paper-based processes to digital solutions for tasks like rent payment, lease renewals, and maintenance requests.
Increase long-term revenue: By enhancing efficiency and client relationships through improved digital tools and information sharing, the goal is to drive long-term revenue growth.
BACKGROUND
ABOUT iHome for NovaLand
Project context & Problems
Currently, over 235,000 tenants in the Northern California Bay Area receive subsidized rental assistance through the California-administered Section 8 Leased Housing Program. Many of these tenants reside in older apartment buildings, primarily constructed around the 1930s. Unlike newly built rental properties, these older buildings require frequent maintenance.
When tenants face plumbing, gas, heating problems or broken appliances, they must contact the property manager by phone or email to request repairs. There is no guarantee that the property manager will pick up the call or see the email and reply on time. The tenant cannot track the progress or provide updates quickly. As a result, a way to efficiently communicate with the property manager becomes an imminent need.
64%
tenants cannot contact with property manager effectively when them find a property damage
34%
manager of old property still accept money orders or personal checks as rental payments
$62.4 m
is the avg loss the old property agencies of California suffer due to the poor property management
It's hard to create meaningful and sustained professional mobile applications for both rental seekers and property agencies.
For tenants living in such an apartment that has suffered from the long process of repairing, the iHOME app will help them as a bridge to communicate between multiple counter-parties, provide effortless maintenance and management for an apartment, and create a friendly, human-orientated community.
Target Users
Tentants
Agency
Property Manager
Business goal to Design goal
Nova Land Management aims to build a platform that facilitates communication between tenants and property managers, allowing timely triage of tenants' needs.
For tenants, the app will display essential information like lease agreements and payment history and offer features such as online rent payment, repair and maintenance requests, and direct contact with property managers for urgent issues.
The app will consolidate tenant requests into a trackable list for property managers and provide a communication channel to address tenants' questions anytime, anywhere with internet access.
This enhanced efficiency and stronger client-agent relationships will ultimately drive long-term revenue by offering users personalized services through improved digital tools and information sharing.
It's more about the entire design methodology process.
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What was the problem we had to solve?
iHome is an app that connects tenants with the entire community that aims to provide a pleasant living experience
Research
User Needs Analysis
Research Methods
To get a better understanding of users’ needs, I conducted 10 interviews with users to learn about their priorities and issues with living in an apartment. These interviews included 1 on 1 interviews and phone interviews.
In-depth interview
Competitive analysis
User Testing
User Persona & Journey map
In-depth Interviews:
Users want ≠ needs
10+
Online research reports and articles
6
Interviews of rental findings app
2
Company on site field observation
User needs interviews revealed the current process for reporting repair issues to apartments, as well as the problems and difficulties tenants have when trying to book repairs. Attendees also shared their thoughts and experiences with rent payments and declarations.
Here are some findings from the interview:
For some apartments with apan plication process, it is better to make an online application portal. Knowledgeable tenants can prepare all the required documents without a broker’s help, thus online application would save a lot of time and cost for both tenants and landlords.
Some small issues will come the next day, very fast. The AC takes a little bit longer because they need to buy a new one to change, maybe 1 week.
I can choose my available time at home or give access to repairing if I’m out working. After the repair was done, they will leave a message online to let me know.
Auto payment for the rent is great.
Usually, by email, they do put a notice on your door a few days ago before they come.
The apartment inserts an envelope of statement on the door. I usually just throw it away.
If the thing is important. They will call us directly.
We have a website so that I can pull up my payment history anytime.
So for the important notice, they insert it from the door and send me an email. Some other notices, like I got a package, they just send me an email.
Our air conditioner was out of work. We reported online.
I missed one notice. By that week, I entered through the garage and walked to my floor, but they only posed notice on the front gate, lobby, and elevator.
We report repairing issues by writing a note and putting it into the box on the office door. Sometimes I put several notes and did not get any response. One day I came across the supervisor in the lobby, he said he received the notes, but have to wait for some parts ordered from the vendor.
They insert a hard copy of the lease renewal agreement from the door. We fill it up and mail it back with a check. Their management office is not located in our apartment.
They will remind me to renew one month before the lease end by email. I hope I could just my paper lease document ASAP, instead of asking them in person for a long time.
User Interview Findings
4 major motivations and goals for building this platform
1. Catch and show all available homes in the data database
2. Efficient communication through three types of users
3. Report fixing issues and send handyman to fix
4. Pay rental or other repairing fee thourgh the app
User Persona
"I have no idea how to connect with the property manager, I have to work at night and sleep during the daytime. It's so hard to find the right person."
Jeff Adam
Motivations
Live near subway/bus station
Age: 26
Highly organized person
Occupation: Nurse
Like to plan ahead
Location: San Jose
Being independent
Life Stage: Living with a girlfriend & a cat
Tech literacy: High
Constraints
Busy, not enough time
Prefer high-efficiency communication
Don't like accidents to interrupt plans
Use Cases
Identifying high-impact scenarios when customization is needed
While analyzing our findings from user interviews, we identified student find a cheapest rental apartment and contact with agent to be the most common use cases or scenarios where tenants stated they would utilize a solution to customize their rental home. Therefore, we determined the solution needs to account for:
1. High-stress situations 2. Time sensitivity 3. Quality of service 4. Safety
Students find a cheapest rental apartment online
contact with a manager to fix a home damage
Pain Points to Solution
How can I help tenants and property agencies overcome these barriers and create a more genuine and effective experience with the help of information technology?
UX Competitive Analysis Similar Products Already Existed
To start with the research, we analyzed 2 direct competitors. The current apartment management software is mainly aimed for homeowners.
I learned that:
Building Link Has both a website and a mobile app. Residents can request maintenance, list guests, book amenities, track packages, interact with neighbors, and access benefits from local vendors. Users complain about Building Link’s layout and look; slow or delayed notification of updates; fixed profile that users can not edit; unintuitive design for maintenance requests.
Renoir House Has both a website and a mobile app. Pretty interface with functions of online rent payment, sending maintenance requests and following the progress in real-time, and receiving important memos and information from email, SMS, phone call or push notifications. The advantage of building stack is that tenants can rate the fixed ticket once it is resolved.
Criteria of comparison: after studying the two competitors’ products, I categorize the design features into four main categories: “Efficiency of use”, “Time and location flexibility”, “User engagement” and “Safety”.
Solutions
Information Architecture
Design Goals
Online Payment
Tenants could pay rent online and pull rent statements anytime from the app
Tenants could renew leases with an e-signature on the app, instead of going back and forth with the paperwork
Maintenance Request
The tenant could request maintenance online
Progress status will be demonstrated in the app
Efficient communication will benefit both tenants and property owners
Notification & Chat
Besides traditional posters in the lobby, the app will send push notifications for the notice
Tenants could choose to receive a chat by iHome
Wireframe & LoFI
Initial sketches and ideate
Lo-Fi
Creating a Visual Model of an Envisioned Product & Task it
I totally went through two rounds of usability testing, let the users play with the click able prototype to go through basic tasks, and I take notes and implemented the changes, here is a google doc link of the tasks design and notes I made during the testing.
Iterations & Explorations
After flow tasking, users want to prioritize a successful pairing experience more than anything else. That guild users to target the house easily.
All our interviews and testing concluded with one main point:
Our target users want an effective questionnaire or survey to figure out what kind of work ethics and personalities other people have. Not “I am a hard worker.“ “I am a team player.“ type of test results.
Meaningful data can reduce the painful process of finding a good teammate.
That was it.
The unique part of iHome is a strong
Solution and Impact
Hi-Fi Prototype
System Design
Our target audience of the app ranged from younger professionals to older rent seekers in the age range of 21-45, so having a typeface that welcomed both was essential. I decided to use a combination of
SF Pro
for a professional but still approachable and engaging look.
I created text styles in Figma for the design team to use along with a type scale guide for reference
Interface Elements
& Components
The app icon was designed around the imagery of construction commonly used in communication and team building and made use of overlapping circular shapes as a visual indication of the intersection of values and goals in a team or community. I exported different-sized versions for the App Store, iPhone, Spotlight, Settings, and Notification sections, as Founder was designed first for iOS.
I built a component library in Figma to use as building blocks for the app interface. I made sure that the small details like rounded corners, alignment, heights, and widths across components were all consistent for pixel perfection.
Main Features Aline with Business Goal
1. Profile_payment
Tenants could pay rent online and pull rent statements anytime from the app
Tenants could renew leases with an e-signature on the app, instead of going back and forth with the paperwork
2. Profile_Maintenance Request
The tenant could request maintenance by
iHome Progress status will be demonstrated in the app
Efficient communication will benefit both tenants and property owners
3. Profile_Notification & Chat
Besides traditional posters in the lobby, the app will send push notifications for the notice
Tenants could choose to receive a chat by iHome
Onboarding
Taking User Survey to target a new home
Search for a new home
Profile
New Challenges Present New Opportunities To Learn
The Tortoise or The Hare?
Though I was more drawn to creating wireframes and prototypes, I found that the most important part of the process was testing. For example, usability testing was crucial in finding errors and seeing things from a different perspective. The biggest error occurred with the onboarding process, which many of my participants skipped because they thought was too long. However, skipping the onboarding caused the participants to have a harder time completing the tasks I asked them to do. In my next iteration, I redid the onboarding to strike a balance between what my participants wanted and what they needed. Based on feedback from my usability testing, I also conducted a preference test to see which version of the home screen participants preferred. All of them preferred the alternate version. This was an excellent reminder to put my personal tastes aside and keep my users front and center.
64%
tenants cannot contact with property manager effectively when them find a property damage
34%
manager of old property still accept money orders or personal checks as rental payments
$62.4 m
is the avg loss the old property agencies of California suffer due to the poor property management
It's hard to create meaningful and sustained professional mobile applications for both rental seekers and property agencies.
For tenants living in such an apartment that has suffered from the long process of repairing, the iHOME app will help them as a bridge to communicate between multiple counter-parties, provide effortless maintenance and management for an apartment, and create a friendly, human-orientated community.
