In London the lettings process can get time consuming. Tenants forever trawling online listings and booking inspections, only to feel disappointed when the property doesn't match their expectations. Often, landlords or agents aren't fully aware of potential tenants individual needs.
Approach
Honest Homes aimed to improve the lettings process by offering better quality inspections, with more accurate listings. Users could filter down properties through 'Property Match' checking criteria important to them. Search results would then display properties through a 'traffic light' schema, so users could quickly recognise their closest matches.
What I did
From inception of the proposition to the protoype I worked as a partner of the startup,: I ran a brand workshop with the co-founder to develop the brand identity 'Honest Homes' and also led a small design team to run in depth user interviews with potential users, that culminated in a series of personas and the initial protoype for testing.
Tasks & Responsibilites
• User Interviews • Competitor Analysis • Protoyping
Valuable learnings came from the usability testing: 'Honesty' as a proposition had mixed results: some users were cynical to the claim, some were re-assured. The property match feature resonated well; we learnt incorporating 'deal breaker' criteria (i.e 'good light' or 'safe neighbourhood') would set it apart from competitors.
The co-founder found merit in having a ux designer work so close with them and educate them on design thinking. It built the function into the top level of their company, to carry them forward as they began their journey on finding product market fit.
