Brief Overview
Zie properties is a real estate start up that focuses on helping customers with low credit scores acquire rental properties
The Problem:
People with low credit ratings find it difficult to own rental properties.
The Goal:
Design a responsive website to help potential clients with low credit scores acquire rental properties.
My Role:
- Worked as a UX Designer to facilitate building out wireframes and a lo-fi prototype for the responsive website.
My Responsibilities:
Paper and digital wireframes, conducting interviews, lo-fi prototyping, conducting usability studies and iterating on designs.Constructed paper & digital wireframes along with low & high fidelity prototyping.
User Research:
We focused on the experiences of those who applied for the government rental program which allows public citizens the ability to rent housing properties at fair market rates to qualified low income tenants.
However, without the right credit rating their applications automatically get disqualified. Little intro text
Pain Points
Support:
- Customers feel the algorithms aren’t written in a way that favors them regardless of their income bracket
Accessibility:
- Lack of access to platforms that can help with specific rental issues.
Time:
- Users don’t have enough time to go through a myriad of applications and websites to land a rental that isn’t guaranteed.
Persona
Site Map
Paper Wireframes
Taking the time to draft out iterations of each page for the website ensured the elements that made it to the digital wireframes were well suited to address user pain points. I made it a point to show information the user cared about in order to save time.
Digital Wireframes
As the initial design phase continued I made it a point to base the screen designs on findings and feedback from user research. Easy sharing options came in handy while creating these wireframes, seeing that users prefer having options to relay that information.
Low-Fidelity Prototype
The low fidelity prototype connected the primary user flow of searching and populating sales data for albums for use during a usability study.
Final Mockups
Lessons Learned
If I were given the go ahead to see this project through, we’d start by interviewing a more diverse set of individuals in need of renting and organizations involved in the credit rehabilitation process to better fix breakdowns within the system. Furthermore, we’d look to other cities as well as their contemporary programs to understand how they’ve handled these issues and perhaps implement some of their policies to inform our solutions while actively making an effort to effect change in the system.
Next Steps
- Partner with credit building programs to increase user chances of getting accepted
Continue co-ordinating usability studies to foster a better user experience.- Based on how users engage with the website, determine iterations.