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Reimagining Online Home-Hunting Experience for 99acres

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Overview

This was my Graduation Project at Info Edge India for 99acres mobile app. India’s largest property portal, 99acres, deals with every aspect of the consumers’ needs in the real estate marketplace.

During the house-hunting process, a buyer or renter has to visit various localities to make an informed decision. Shortlisting a property through this tends to be a long-drawn process costing the user time and money. The project objective was to reimagine an online house-hunting experience that would enable and assist the user at the various touchpoints while they go about finding their dream house.

My Role

User Experience Research & Design

Duration

6 Months | June - December 2019

Company

Info Edge India

Home is where our story begins...

Objectives

  • To study the requirements & expectations of home buyers & renters.

  • To study users’ property purchasing/renting patterns.

  • To facilitate the overall experience of finding a suitable place.

SCOPE

Information Design

99acres has been leading the Indian online real estate marketplace with 7.5 lakh property listings as of March 31, 2018; out of which 84% are residential listings. This is the category that I had narrowed down as this project's scope. As the portal maintains an updated nationwide database of properties, registered buyers, and renters, there is a huge opportunity for information design, to enhance the overall experience of these various stakeholders. 

LIMITATIONS

Legacy Product

99acres is an online classified for real estate, and at this point, the company does not want to explore the new verticals, for example, property management services and/or on-platform transactions, so the final deliverable has to be designed keeping such facts in mind.

Need Identification

Why do we need to Reimagine?

  • Lacking in Innovation: Company follows the traditional revenue model, which is primarily based on advertising and listing fees through a subscription-based model

  • The portal, in essence, acts as an information exchange platform

  • Too many listed properties act as information jargon

  • The user interface is non-intuitive and cultured

Product Understanding

Stakeholders

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Focus Area

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Why Renting?

AT COMPANY LEVEL

84% Residential Listings

99acres has been leading the Indian online real estate marketplace with 7.5 lakh property listings as of March 31, 2018; out of which 84% are residential listings.

Higher Drop Off Rate

The residential rental market is contributing high (80%) when it comes to traffic on the platform, but resulting in less (20%) revenue generation. The drop-off from the residential rental market is much more than any other section of the platform.

AT COUNTRY LEVEL - ZOOMING OUT

Estimated Rented housing demand in three major cities - Delhi NCR, Bengaluru, and Mumbai

Migrant Millennial

workforce to grow 1.5X

Rented Houses

Total Urban Houses

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About
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Source: JLL Research | Census, 2011 | National Housing Bank | Livermint.com | Migrant Flows to Delhi Mumbai

AT PSYCHOLOGICAL LEVEL - BEHAVIORAL PATTERNS

Access is the New Ownership

Not just homes Millennials have been reluctant to buy items such as cars, clothes & accessories, furniture & appliances. They’re turning to a new set of services that provide access to products without the burdens of ownership, because of the following reasons,

  • Affordability Quotient

  • Fewer Responsibilities

  • Great Convenience

  • Fewer Upfront Expenses

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What are the Key Problems?

User research helped me to identify and categorize the problems as problems related to properties, problems related to online home renting platforms, and problems related to people involved in the process. Most of the following problems occur due to lack of information, irrelevant data, and misinformation:

  • Property search is time-consuming

  • people are unaware of the localities, rent trends, homeowners, etc.

  • Generic, irrelevant information on the platform

  • Too many old listings of unavailable properties

  • Misleading or low-quality photographs 

  • Spam calls from random brokers during working or late hours

  • No record of contacted owners or visited properties

Opportunity

How might we make the house-hunting process fast, organized, and insightful?

Goals

I converted the key problems into opportunities to solve during the redesign.

  • To help users to make informed decisions

  • To optimize the big data collected from the users to their advantage

  • To increase user engagement on the platform

Design Process

The process was non-linear, with a lot of to & fro between the steps. You can find a detailed research document at the end of this case study. Below are the main stages of the design process I followed while working on this project,

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Insights

Property

  • Deciding on location and searching for the right property at the desired location are two major decision-making points for tenants.​

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  • The house-hunting process starts with an inquiry through both online and offline channels. An immediate circle is an offline channel people discuss and inquire about the property. Simultaneously they check online property listings and social media groups. Next, they manually filter out these gathered options based on their requirements and budget.

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  • The amenities people look for during the house-hunting process range from qualitative aspects like cleanliness, ambiance, quietness, and affordability to specific features like a security guard, lift, gym, accessibility, and commute.

Platform

  • Most of the problems with online platforms are related to the quality of the listing. Misleading, unclear photographs of the property, no context of the surrounding, and too many irrelevant options are some of the major issues users face while using online platforms. 

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  • Property availability is the most significant factor to look for, mainly because of the outdated property listings, which makes the house hunting experience hectic.

People

  • Finding a trustworthy broker to set up a new home is highly taxing and time-consuming. Fresh graduates and working professionals face immense difficulties while shifting.

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  • Many people want to reduce their traveling time by staying near their workplace. Students and young professionals prefer the area where access to transport and food joints and food deliveries are easily available.

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  • Most people got their leads for the vacant place from their immediate circle, society office, security guards, shopkeepers, and house-help who knows about the most flats in the area. People find them more reliable as they provide factual information.

Ideation

Problems

Insights

Solutions

Ideation started with listing the main problems users face, followed by the insights gathered from the primary and secondary research related to that problem. The final step was to identify the possible solutions for the mentioned problem. The thinking aloud technique helped me to come up with the below approaches. After discussing these approaches with the Info Edge Design team and considering the scope, limitations, and positives, these concepts were combined and refined for the final designs.

Initial Approaches

1. New Ways of Finding a Property

  • The new platform may not use the standard type and search approach to find a house. Voice-based input to search a property.

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  • A chat-based platform where users can mention their requirements to get suitable property options.

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  • The new platform may provide on-the-go, location-based alerts and property options. A kiosk in public places to find out properties in that particular area.

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  • Profile creation of properties and house seekers, like dating apps, could be one way to find a suitable home.

2. Emerging Technologies

  • The new platform will use emerging technology like Artificial Intelligence, Augmented Reality, and Virtual Reality to help users make informed decisions.

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  • AI can be used to capture users’ exact intentions while searching for a new home and to show them suitable options.

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  • AR could help users during the site visits in many interesting ways, for example, to measure the length of a balcony or carpet area of a hall.

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  • VR could be helpful if the site visits are not possible immediately, for example, for people looking for a home in a different city than their current city.

3. Complete Package

  • The new platform will provide or assist the users with all the services related to the house renting process.

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  • These services would be Internet Provider, Furniture Lending, House Keeping Service, Packing & Shifting, Rent Agreement Process, Payment of the rent, etc.

 

  • To achieve this goal, the new platform may collaborate with various service providers such as Furlenco, and Hathway, or with cab services like Ola, and Uber for site visits, or with Urbanclap for cleaning, maintenance, or tiffin services with Swiggy, Zomato, etc

Explorations

Paper Wireframes

Mid-Fidelity Wireframes

Usability Testing

After the explorations, I did usability testing with a set of targeted users. These are some of the main findings from the testing. You can find the detailed Usability Testing Report in a research document at the end of this case study.

  • Many users found the Property Details Page insightful and easy to interact with. However few users felt that too much data was hard to comprehend.

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  • Users mentioned Ratings and Reviews as one of the most useful features. Some users said they might not tap the CTA to see more reviews, hence they might not discover the Reviews and Rating page ever.

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  • Users found difficulties while discovering the Compare Property feature. They wanted to compare the properties directly from Property Details Page instead of marking it as Favourite and then Compare.

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  • Almost all users preferred on-platform communication as the most useful feature. As they are used to online communication platforms like WhatsApp, they found it very easy to discover and interact.

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  • The majority of the users couldn't find the option to schedule a visit. But once they discovered the option to schedule a visit, the flow was easy.

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  • Note Taking feature got mixed responses as most of the users found it useful but they might not use it intuitively. The discovery & interactions were easy as the placement is the same as the existing Note feature.

Final Solution

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From Famous to Favourite

From Information to Insights

myPlace helps people to explore properties using custom-tailored collections of properties. It enables property seekers to compare properties on the platform and provide Ratings and Reviews about the property and locality to make an informed decision. People can save their time and efforts by scheduling a visit while chatting with the property owner using myPlace.

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Onboarding Flow

Key Features

  • Custom-tailored Collections of Properties

  • Insightful Dynamic Property Page with Hyperlocal Details

  • Property / Locality Rating & Reviews

  • Chat with Owner - On-platform communication

  • Schedule Visits & Timely Reminders

  • Compare Properties

  • Multimedia Note Taking

  • Property discovery via Stories

myPlace Home Screen

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For First-Time Users

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For Regular Users

Custom-Tailored Collections of Properties

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Ratings & Reviews

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Multimedia Note Taking

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Chat with Owner

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Schedule Visits & Timely Reminders

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Compare your Favorite Properties

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Revisiting the Goals

The below list shows how the suggested key features fulfill the Goals I set at the beginning of this project.

Goal: To help users to make informed decisions

  • Custom-tailored Collections of Properties

  • Insightful Dynamic Property Page with Hyperlocal Details

  • Property / Locality Rating & Reviews

  • Compare Properties

Goal: To optimize the big data collected from the users to their advantage

  • Insightful Dynamic Property Page with Hyperlocal Details

  • Property discovery via Stories

Goal: To increase user engagement on the platform

  • Chat with Owner - On-platform communication

  • Schedule Visits & Timely Reminders

  • Compare Properties

  • Multimedia Note Taking

  • Property discovery via Stories

Impact

99acres started conducting detailed research for the suggested features. Custom-tailored Collections of Properties, Insightful Dynamic Property Page with Hyperlocal Details, and Property / Locality Rating & Reviews are now live on their mobile app. For on-platform communication, the team preferred to give the option to chat on Whatsapp directly. Other suggested features are kept behind to explore in the future based on the business requirements. 

Learnings

Research is the foundation of building called design

The most important thing I’ve learned is that solid research helps to understand the complexity of the domain and provides key insights based on which we can design better solutions.

Importance of Communication

Another thing I’ve learned is the importance of communication in UX. It could be by storytelling, persona building, or journey mapping. Stories help to understand different scenarios that users might face.

Pen before Pixels

Using pen & paper to ideate & test designs helped me save time, which made things easier when I switched to a computer for making the final product.

Iterations & Testings

The iterative process meant lots of testing at different stages. I got to test the Mid-Fidelity prototype with end-users. It was a whole new experience that allowed for testing visual balance, readability, comprehension, and interactions.

Research Document

To keep this case study concise, I omitted the research part. In the below document, you can find the Design Process, Target User Group, Competitive Analysis, Research Strategy, Research Objective, User Selection Criteria, Qualitative and Quantitative Research, and Empathy Mapping. This document also includes the Synthesis of User research, Archetypes, Use Cases, User Persona, detailed User Journey, and User Experience Flows. At the end of this document, you will find the Usability Testing Report.

Thank you for reading!

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