BIFL ROOMATE
APPLICATION
Bifl has been a UX passion project that just never fully got off the ground. Originally, it was meant to be a social media application that I conceptualized upon moving to a new area. I had big plans going into the project however, I hadn’t done enough research
initially to fully fleshed out what I had in mind. The biggest issues I came across were as follows:
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The app divulging from its intended purpose.
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How it would stand out amongst similar social apps?
With a craving for a change of pace in my career, a friend of mine sent me a few resources to help me make the switch to product design. Included was an article from Artiom Dashinsky at WeWork. It contained quite a few exercise prompts one of which seemed to be the fix I needed to reignite Bifl and bring
it to fruition.
Given these trends, city dwellers tend to spend most of their twenties living with roommates. Finding & keeping a good roommate, however, gets harder as more people swarm into cities.
Design a mobile product experience with the following specifications:
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A safe way to find the ideal roommate in
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Demographic: Millennials
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Location: New York City.
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Perspective: User looking for a roommate & apartment.
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Constraint: Stick to existing mobile capabilities of iOS & Android
What else can this product do to make the roommate experience better? Also, identify pain points in the “finding/keeping a good roommate” journey & find ways to solve those pain points.
The Prompt
In order to better understand what finding a roommate was like in 2021 as well as to help me better construct a problem statement I
began researching:
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Websites & apps that fit the parameters of the prompt.
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Explored what the users experience was on these applications.
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Observed how things were typically laid out.
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Reading through user reviews of competing applications.
I found quite a few of the applications I visited didn’t really make the process of finding a roommate easier as a lot had apartment/ rooms and user profiles mixed together in the same search or had pay walls that discouraged users from wanting to continue.
So what's the problem exactly? Based off the prompt and all the
research I had done up until this point, I wrote the following as my problem statement.
“Young millennials struggle to find a safe, ideal living arrangement
because of the constant influx of people coming to the city.”
With this statement in place, I began on the process of streamlining what this app should look based on the following;
Research
RESEARCH
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How can the app be made to be as safe as possible?
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How can I address common pain points in the roommate
search process?
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How can I condense all this information about a potential roommate, apartment, or area of New York City.
Through HMW exercises, affinity mapping, and more research on authenticating users and apartments as well as exploring how to help users who are new to the city I moved onto creating a user persona.
Define
Define
Upon deciding on the direction of a persona I knew it would important to showcase a user that would use all the features Bifl would eventually have to offer. So someone who is newer to New York would benefit from the apps Area Guides as well as someone who needs a roommate and apartment.
Since I had been really focused on the security theme of the app I thought it would be best for the persona to be either female or non-binary as these two groups are usually found to be more concerned about their personal safety than cis men. Ultimately, I choose to go with the following persona as I felt she would check all the fictitious boxes I had on my checklist.
With my persona in place, I used my site map and the experiences from competitors' websites and apps to map out what the Bifl experience would be like. I knew that registering for an account was going to be a pain point solely because of how long it would need to be in order to offer the most optimal matches based on the user’s personal preferences.
Secondly, I knew the background check waiting period would be another pain point but would ultimately be worth it. With those items in mind, I continued on through the journey in the shoes of Kristen Smith.
Ideate
Ideate
At this point, I was pretty confident going into the design phase of the process. I already had a couple of ideas about how I wanted to lay out a few pages as well as a brand identity that I had created previously. However, I still wanted to research other layout and style options as well as create a moodboard to ensure that everything was cohesive once I started to create all my high fidelity mockups.
After searching through Pinterest and Dribble I came across a few projects that contained layouts that I thought would work better than my initial ideas. This part of the process also helped me to expand upon the branding for Bifl as I hadn’t thought about how I wanted to include illustrations into the design yet.
As I mentioned before, I had a couple of ideas for the layout of the app before I even started my moodboards. I wanted to keep my
wireframes pretty low fidelity to save a bit of time and to just get all my ideas out.
To start, I choose a modern layout that focused on containing and organizing the abundant information that each page would eventually contain. Roommate and apartment applications typically have quite a bit of content so keeping everything clear & concise was pivotal.
In order to help in distinguishing between users & apartment listings, I opted to separate the two into their own search pages. Based on my research, I found several websites with search features that didn’t make it initially apparent which was a user listing versus an apartment or room. Moving and finding a roommate is already stressful enough so streamlining the process of searching for one was a priority.
With all that in mind, I blocked everything out and moved on to creating Bifl’s final iteration.
Finalization
Finalization
