PHASE 1:
DISCOVER

1.1 Literature Review

Students in Ireland face an accommodation crisis and it is found that restricted living situation is one of the main problems faced by numerous students in the country. A huge majority of these students reported the housing crisis having an impact on their mental health. The government is planning to invest in providing more housing options for students to tackle the issue and therefore there will eventually be greater availability of these housing options that can be looked up by students.

Students often have to defer or withdraw as they struggle with finding proper accommodation. Students often end up finding accommodations far away from their universities or look to rent whole apartments with a group of friends. Recent schemes have allowed homeowners to rent rooms as well. With these rooms, students face the problem of finding an accommodation with affordable pricing, good quality living conditions and sufficient facilities.

1.2 Competitor Analysis - Daft.ie

I conducted a competitive analysis to understand how the competitors are offering similar services and what are their major strengths.

1. Branding and Website UI

There are too many steps from the point a user lands on the website till the end point of finalising a rental place.

There is no visibility of rental ads on the landing page which is a bad interaction as they should be visible upfront instead of the 5th step in user journey.

2. Familiar Seach Bar

The search bar is clear with categories and filters. Fitt’s Law is properly employed with different search categories and section browsing options close to each other hence minimum time is taken to navigate between these options.

3. Sufficient Filter Options

The filter options cover a wide range of options such as radius, price, beds, type of property, baths,facilities etc.

4. Efficient User Journey

You reach the room ads within 1-2 steps and can immediately start viewing accommodation options.

5. No Information Overload

The overall design is clean with information groupedappropriately. Affordances in the form of buttonsare clear to contact agent/owner and to icons are used for further actions like saving, printing or sharing the ad.

1.3 Problem Statement

The problem statement was developed through several steps to ensure thorough inclusion of the problem scope within the final problem statement.

Initial Draft: Notion Writeup

The 5 Ws technique was used to break the problem into separate sections to give a clearer picture. Multiple problem statements were developed at this stage.

Further Iterations: Miro Board Group Activity

A group activity was conducted where inputs from different participants were taken to create several versions of the problem statement.

Final Problem Statement

"How might we improve the user experience for students using rent.ie who currently experience frustration and waste of time leading to website drop off and dissatisfaction?"

PHASE 2:
DEFINE

2.1 Research Design - Methodology

To obtain the answer to the problem statement and to gain deeper insight into the problem of student accommodation, different research and definition methods were incorporated as part of the process.

2.2 Survey

The participants were introduced to the survey and requested to navigate through rent.ie as a pre-requisite to filling out the survey. The participants were informed of the estimated time to complete the survey and that the participation was voluntary. The survey is designed with the principles of ethical research such as virtue, empathy and duty so that no harm was caused to the participants in any way through the survey process. It was aimed to collect quantitative data on the functionality of rent.ie website.

The survey incorporates a combination of different types of survey questions such as demographic, open-ended, closed-ended, rating, Likert Scale and multiple choice questions. The questions are aimed at understanding user needs while navigating accommodation websites and the problems they face while using rent.ie.

View Survey Questionnaire

2.3 User Personas

User personas of different backgrounds were created to deeply understand how the problem effects different users at different points.

User Persona 1

This persona covers an international student with minimum travel and accomodation search experience.

User Persona 2

This persona covers a local student in Ireland with sufficient prior experience in renting rooms.

2.4 User Scenario

The personas created were placed into individual user scenarios to identify the pain points in their user journey. This would help guide the design considerations while ideating the potential solutions.

Scenario 1: Ahmed's User Journey

This scenario displays where Ahmed abandoned the website mid user-journey and visits a different website.

Scenario 2: Aoife's User Journey

This scenario displays where Aoife goes through the whole user experience due to her nature of completing a task she has started, even though she is frustrated by the website experience.

2.5 User Flow

An initial and refined user flow was created to visualise the site structure and identify main decision points in the user journey.

Initial Hand Drawn Sketch

The first draft of the user flow was hand-drawn to quickly visualise the site structure. It helped highlight the journey stages which could be optimised.

Updated Digital User Flow

The updated user flow was created digitally with a simplified user flow.

2.6 Empathy Map

The empathy map was created to gain a deeper understanding of users emotions as they navigate the website.

2.7 SWOT Analysis

The SWOT Analysis allowed me to map out the strengths, weaknesses opportunities and threats to rent.ie as a service. This would influence the design considerations while ideating solutions.

PHASE 3:
DEVELOP

3.1 Crazy 8's

The initial exercise involved all possible ideas without any limits or filters. These would later be streamlined and shortlisted.

3.2 Brand/Logo Redesign

Initial Sketches

The first step was to create rough sketches with key pointers. To inform the logo update, a breakdown of the previous logo concept was done.

Refined Logo Ideas

The top logo ideas were extracted, combined and refined to form a final logo.

3.3 Screen Sketches

Multiple homepage wireframes were used compare different homepage re-designs.

3.4 Mindmap

Initial Draft

A hand-drawn mind map was used to map out the main topic areas.

Detailed Mindmap

The mind map was digitally expanded into a detailed version of each branch. This helped me understand the topics revolving around the core problem of providing renting solutions.

3.5 Finalised Hypothesis

"How might we improve the user experience for students using rent.ie who currently experience frustration and waste of time leading to website drop off and dissatisfaction?"

PHASE 4:
DELIVER

The ideation phase concluded with the development of a final hypothesis and basic design drafts for the website/brand design. The prototyping phase finalised the designs along with user feedback.

4.1 Brand Redesign

Logo Redesign

The final logo is a minimalistic logo with a simple and clean design. Logos of this category are modern and professional which can be easily used on multiple mediums. For the case of a website, this logo can easily fit in the header area while the icon will easily be visible as a favicon. The icon can be used on its own on social media profile pictures and the logo as a whole can be used on print materials.

Typography & Colour Palette

The typography and colour palette were updated to portray a modern and reliable brand voice.

4.2 Functional Module

The information architecture for rent.ie was created to include all the necessary options.

4.3 Site Map

The sitemap was created using the information from functional modules to lay out the user possible user journeys.

4.4 Mid-Fidelity Prototype - Wireframes

Figma Interactive Design

An interactive greyscale prototype was designed and feedback was received on it for further iterations.

Use Figma Prototype

User Feedback - Questions

Were you able to quickly find student accommodation ads?
Is the homepage easy to use? Was there an information overload on the home screen? If there are any missing pieces of information please suggest those.
Do the filters cover everything important for an accommodation search, especially from the perspective of a student?
Does the page that displays ads have sufficient information?
Once you have opened the ad, is the layout easy to understand and can you find relevant information and contact button easily?

User Feedback - Results

Homepage Ads Section: It was indicated that displaying 5 top ads was too much as it would make it difficult to see the room images and other details. This was incorporated by only including 3 ads upfront with the option to scroll horizontally.
Header: Adding student accomodation to header was suggested to add another user path which is updated in the final design.
Homepage categories: Rearranging categories in terms of priority was suggested with rent being the first option which is not included due to the redesign being primarily targeted for students, but they are otherwise rearranged to a more appropriate order.
Toggle Display: The option to view listings as lists or grid was suggested which is added to the final design.
Filter Options: Additional filter options were suggested such as sharing roomates, single gender accommodation, shared kitchen, wheelchair access, pet friendly and smoking/non smoking options which were incorporated in the filters tab.
Homepage - How it Works section : A section to guide users was added through a feedback pointer so that new users can watch an onboarding video to understand all about rent.ie.
Landlord Ad posting: Based on feedback, a section to post ads as a landlord was added on the homepage.

4.5 High-Fidelity Prototype: Light Mode

The design was updated after feedback and high fidelity prototype was created as the next iteration. It included the entire redesign of the website with a clear path for booking student accommodation.

Use Rent.ie Final Website Design

4.6 High-Fidelity Prototype: Dark Mode

For accessibility, a dark-mode version of the website was also created.