Homi – Personal Project
Team
Vivian Sek – UX/UI designer
UX Techniques used
User Interview
Competitor analysis
Affinity Mapping
Empathy Mapping
Persona
Customer Journey
Card Sorting
Prototyping
Usability Testing
Project Type
Mobile (IOS)
Tools
Miro
Figma
Project Overview
Project Timeline
3 weeks
Problem Statement
“Living in shared accommodation is challenging for most people. People who are living with share housemates are likely to encounter conflicts due to the different living style habits, lack of communication, and sometimes financial pressure. They are looking for an effective approach to solve the share house challenge.”
Solution
A simple and intuitive mobile app that provides household management, including organising house duties and bill spitting within the whole share house.
The scope of this project is to focus on creating a simple, user-friendly interface that assists users to manage their daily share house lives efficiently.
Discover
Research method
A total of 20 online surveys were done to gather data on users’ behaviour, attitudes, views, and needs. To get a better picture of user behaviours and validate my idea, I have used three research method to gather data:
20 surveys
A total of 20 online surveys were done to gather data on users’ behaviour, attitudes, views, and needs.
Four 1:1 interview
I created a user research plan with an interview script and interview questions. This research method allows me to understand their everyday share house life and identified their pain point.
Competitive analysis
In order to get a better understanding of the competitors and industry trends, I conducted some competitor analysis and evaluation to gain insight into the problem and look for opportunities to explore further. This chart was made to identify the current key features of the apps and the user’s solution, as well as to compare the potential difference between products.
Six apps were chosen to understand the market and compare similar features in order to determine their approach to the product’s usability and appeal.
Define
After finishing the initial stage of the double Dimond, I have moved on to synthesising the research. I have utilised the affinity map to help me to discover the key themes and patterns in the affinity map, followed by an empathy map to interpret the data on an emotional level to better understand our user group.
Affinity Map
Empathy Map
Key pain points
- Find it challenging to split household costs fairly or Sometimes housemates are not paying share money back on time
- Difficult to keep track of household chores with housemates
- Disagreement over household tasks due to unclear responsibilities
- Avoid confronting any household problems face to face
Persona
From the empathy map, a Persona was developed to represent my target audience based on data I have gathered before.
Develop
How Might We
I reframed my insight into the following HMW statement to help generate possible solutions.
Crazy 8’s
I set up a rapid brainstorming section (Crazy 8’s) with a group of three to generate as many ideas as possible by this sketching exercise, as well as mapping out the MVP to prioritising features that address my key HMW question.
User Flow
I created a User Flow diagram to display and map out each and every step the user takes—from the entry point right through to the final interaction.
Wireframe
After user story and flow, I have created a few wireframes which focus on the main features of my app. The wireframe helps me to map out the blueprint for the app which describes the information structure of elements.
UI design
Deliver
Usability Testing
I used the prototype design in Figma to conduct a test with 5 users via in-person and zoom meetings.
Flow 1
You need to create a house group and invite four of your housemates to join the group, explore the app after you finish creating a house group.
Flow 2
You have recently paid the entire house rent to the landlord. Now you would like to ask your housemate James to pay you back his share money. To get money from James, use the app to make a request.
Testing Results
Positive feedback
Pain points
- Simple and clean UI
- Good contrast which helps readability
- App Convention
- Good features
- Easy to navigate
- Missing Notification icon & page
- Would love to see some Stats on Expenses and Task page
- Confused with the wording on the expenses page
- A filter option is suggested
Final Design
Set up a House
Home tab
Once a house is set up, user can go to the Home tab to see their most recent expenses, tasks, events, and notifications.
Features
- Users can add, split, and track expenses on the Expenses page
- Users can add, assign, and track household tasks on the Tasks page
- User can create an event on the Calendar page
- Users can see and change settings on the Setting page
Split a bill
User can add expenses and split them between members, the split payment request will be sent to the other members once the user submits the request.
Interactive Prototype
Final Thoughts
User-Centred Design: Even though I have personally lived in a share house for more than 5 years, my experience would vary with the user. Only by conducting research, I was able to identify the problem that the users face, their goals and contexts of use and make my design user-centre.
Design System: Design systems save me time and ensure that my designs are consistent.
Additional Features: In the future iterations, I would like to implement additional features such as Chat room and reward points system.
More Testing: I would like to conduct further user research and usability testing in the future to see how satisfied my users are when they use my app.
