OVERVIEW

College students are prone to study or intern abroad for short periods of time. Sublet is a mobile app concept that makes it easier for college students to find temporary housing by connecting them to a college-aged subletters. Whether they're hoping to find or post a rental, Sublet is an all-in-one system that takes the worry away from scammers, hidden fees, or unfurnished rooms.
Team
Solo
Project Length
3 weeks
Tools
Google Forms & Sheets
Paper & Pencil
Illustrator
Balsamiq
​Proto.io
Process
Problem Identification
User Research 
Data Analysis 
Primary Research 
Sketches, Wireframes, Mockups
Usability Testing

INSPIRATION

This concept was inspired by my sublet-hunting experience when I interned in Boston. During my search, I experienced many frustrations including:
​
  • Having to manage favorites and conversations across several housing platforms (Facebook pages, Craigslist, Airbnb)
  • Finding a place that accommodated the academic schedule of a quarter-system school
  • Lack of awareness of whether a list price included utilities and/or security deposit
  • Concern in finding a place that was furnished with laundry
  • Desire to live with friendly roommates who were my age
​
 Sublet solves all of these problems. 
Picture
Liberty Mutual Insurance HQ in Boston

USER RESEARCH

Using my personal experience as inspiration and direction, I created and distributed a Google Forms survey to understand the struggles college-aged students were encountering in their search for a temporary home. I wanted to learn what platforms they were using for their search, what factors were important in their search, and the pain points they encountered along the way. My intent was to use this information to guide my design decisions. 

SCREENING
I implemented a screening to filter out respondents that did not have experience seeking temporary housing.

METHOD
The survey included 4 demographic/screening questions and 6 questions targeting the respondents' experience. I distributed the survey on my Facebook account because my network consists of college students, who are the target audience of my concept. 

DATA ANALYSIS

The results from the survey helped to create a user profile and to identify recurring issues that were important to users in their search for a sublet. I closed the survey once the responses became repetitive and the averages weren't changing.
SURVEY OF DEMOGRAPHICS
11/20 respondents were female
11/20 respondents attend a semester-system school
​12/20 respondents sublet because of internships
KEY FINDINGS
These following direct quotes reflect the recurring themes that I found in analyzing the data. ​ I used these key findings to create a persona, design question, and solution.

​"There's no way of knowing if a listing on Facebook and Craigslist is still available unless you contact the host."

"I wanted to live with people who were my age and were willing to hang out because I didn't know anybody in the town." 

"I wanted a place that had furnishing because I didn't want to buy furniture for temporary use." 

"It was hard to tell if a listing was a scam and if it had hidden fees like security deposits" 

"My internship started in May, but a lot of students in the Seattle area were still in school at that time. It was hard to find a place that worked with my schedule." 

PERSONA

I created a user profile based on the survey of demographics. The persona's pain points, needs, and desires influenced my design decisions throughout concept production. 

Katie Carlson, 21 years old

Katie is a junior studying accounting at the University of Washington. This upcoming summer, she will be interning at Deloitte in New York City. After accepting her internship offer, Katie began her search on several Facebook housing pages and Craigslist. Katie spent 4 months looking for the perfect place. Some things that were important to Katie were location, price, furnishing, and access to public transportation. Since she didn't know anyone in NYC, it was important for Katie to have roommates that were friendly and easy-going so that she can hang out with them on weekends. 

DESIGN QUESTION

Based on the findings from the user research, it was clear that there's a lack of system in place for college students to have a reliable, efficient, and effective way to find temporary housing. This led to the design question:

"How can we design a system that allows college students to have a safe and secure platform to search for temporary housing?

SOLUTION

Considering that the target users are college students, I determined that creating an app would be most accessible and familiar to them. I went with a mobile app because I wanted to design mobile first and studies show that 8 in 10 college students regularly use a smart phone (Pearson, 2015).  Given the timeline of the project, I only had time to focus on the renter's experience, excluding the host experience. Below are the features of Sublet that improve user pain points as identified in the key findings.
Verified Login
An .edu email is required to use the app. This ensures that college students have a trusted network of people they can sublet from and that all tenants, hosts, and roommates are around the same age.
Search & filter
A filter system generates search results that matches the user's needs and desires. Users can search by location, furnishing, school system, and etc. ​
overview
​​An overview of the listing includes information about amenities, roommates, relative location to stores/restaurants/public transportation, and images and/or videos of the listing. A video serves as a virtual tour of the listing. ​
cost breakdown
The cost breakdown includes details about security deposit (if any), wifi, gas, electric, water, and monthly rent. This prevents hidden fees and provides transparency to both the host and renter. ​
host contact & information
Information about the host is displayed. All Sublet users are required to fill out a profile which entails information about school, age, interests, living habits, phone number, and photo. ​
inbox
Communication between host and renter is stored in the app's inbox which sends/receives notifications like regular text messages.
request a listing
Users can request to book a listing where they can enter specifics about check-in/out dates. All requests send as a text and can be revisited in the user's inbox. ​
recent searches, recommendations, & favorites
Sublet has the power to save history in the form of recent researches, recommendations, and favorites. All of this can be referred to on the user's homepage. This ensures that users will no longer lose track of their favorites. ​

SITEMAP

The creation of the sitemap was informed by the solution concept. Using the perspective of the user, I created a journey map that the persona would take to navigate through the mobile app. 

INITIAL SKETCHES

Using the sitemap as a reference, I created rough sketches of each page in the mobile app. 

WIREFRAMES

Once I had a good idea of what the pages were going to look like, I converted the sketches to wireframes. This was necessary because the original sketches were too lo-fi to use in usability testing. 

GUERILLA USABILITY TESTING 1

Once I had a low-fidelity prototype of the concept, I used the wireframes to conduct guerilla usability testing. The goal of the usability test sessions were to:
  1. To evaluate the desirability of my concept
  2. To understand if my concept captures the key factors that sublet seekers tend to prioritize in their search for a temporary home ​​

KEY FINDINGS: 
Besides cosmetic suggestions, 3/3 participants indicated that the concept is "very interesting and useful." One participant said that they "see value in the cost breakdown session because when [they were] posting [their] room to sublet last summer, [they] had people ask about wifi, electric, and deposit fees." 

INTERACTIVE MOCKUPS

I improved the pages of the mobile app based on the suggestions provided by the participants in the guerilla usability test. This led to the following hi-fi interactive prototype. 

GUERILLA USABILITY TESTING 2

The second usability test session focused more on discovering issues relating to navigability, intuitiveness, and aesthetics. I conducted the test in a gallery where participants walked around the classroom to interact with product concepts. This setting was ideal because all participants were college students. 

KEY FINDINGS
7/8 participants commented that the photos looked really "nice and fitting" and that my designs were "beautiful," "clean," "sleek," and "useful." 
Vertical Divider
5/8 participants couldn't find a clear exit strategy to "go home" 
Vertical Divider
2/8 participants suggested to divide the 'Search' page so that it's not one long scroll
Vertical Divider
Other cosmetic suggestions: make tabs on the 'List Details' page scrollable, make the on/off slider buttons larger, make it more obvious what pages are scrollable

REFLECTION

Using personal experience to drive the project was extremely rewarding because I was more motivated to create a concept that not only met the needs and desires of the persona and user participants, but also myself. Overall, I'm very satisfied with the final product because I found that many participants thought that my concept is useful and that my designs are effective in conveying the ideas. 

WHAT WORKED WELL

Sublet is appealing to participants because they thought it would be extremely useful. Also, my choice of colors, images, and typography in the final prototype maximized the aesthetics of the concept--4/6 participants in the second guerilla usability testing commented on how visually pleasing my prototype is. At first, I thought that creating a concept inspired by my personal experience would be a terrible idea, but it helped me be more intentional in coming up with features that were practical and necessary for the average user. One of my participants even commented, "I bet you can make a lot of money if this app became a real thing. You should consider pitching the idea somewhere." 

FUTURE IMPROVEMENT

I feel very strongly that Sublet has the potential to make a difference--to make the lives of college students easier. Given more time, I would like to explore the host experience because my concept focused more on the renter's experience. Ultimately, I would like to advance this project enough to potentially work with developers to make it a reality.

Besides implementing the feedback gathered from the second usability test session, in the future, I would experiment with using a different tool to create a hi-fi prototype because I encountered several glitches while using Proto.io, in particular, in clicking on hot spots on a computer.