Roomiez is an app that finds you the perfect roommate.
Currently, there are little to no efficient roommate matching applications that match based on personality match. For my Entrepreneurship course, Digital ProductDesign, I was tasked with designing an application to make the process of finding a roommate more convenient.
Final Prototype

Design Process

ProjectOverview:
‍Role: User Experience Designer & Project Manager
Timeline: 5 Weeks
Tools: Figma, InVision, Adobe Illustrator, Pivotal Tracker

Interviews

To further establish a sense of what college students, look for in a roommate, I conducted student interviews among my peers to gain an understanding of their past roommate finding experiences. After hearing the responses, I was able to gather pain points and frustrations of the process. This allowed me to pinpoint exactly what I needed my application to combat. I also gained positive responses to creating a roommate matching application that matched based on personality. The majority of students choose roommates based on social media presence, close personal interests, as well as similar living criteria

Empathy Mapping

To take a look into what students would want in a roommate application, I used the pain points and challenges that were found during the student interviews. With these frustrations in mind, I created an empathy map for my primary user to encapsulate their thoughts and wants when going about finding a roommate.

Problem Statement

College-aged students want an easy and convenient way to find roommates so they can ensure a comfortable living situation with someone who matches their living style.

Persona Development

I created a primary, secondary, and tertiary users for my interface. I began by mapping out my personas in order to understand the hierarchy of my users. My primary user would be a college student who is looking for a roommate while in college or at a summer internship. My secondary user would be out of college young adults, who are now working a job in new cities and are looking for cheap housing. A tertiary user would potentially be landlords reaching out to those looking for housing or an older adult who found themselves in the need for a short-term roommate.

Audience

·      College/Young Adults looking for roommates
·      Based on location and price range
·      Match based on personality and living style
·      Can also set roommate guidelines and rules
·      People not comfortable with rooming completely blind
·      Looking for a roommate short or long-term
·      Looking for cheaper living options

Brainstorm

When brainstorming, some key ideas and takeaways include:
·     Personality quiz for students to be matched with compatible roommate
·     Messaging feature for user to reach out to potential roommate
·     Filter option to allow users to filter by location, age, gender, etc.
·     Similar to a dating app format and features

Action Mapping and Infrastructure

With all of this knowledge collected on user needs and pain points, I began to develop how I imagined it would look in a more digital space. I took the features and ideas above and adapted them into what a digital application would potentially look like. Through prototyping, sketching, and basic frameworks, I was able to create a basic flow of interactions and how users would go about using the app.

Wireframing

After selecting primary features of the application, I was able to decide on key features to address the user problem:

Iteration / Design Evolution:

The home page is the first screen users will see when logging in so I decided to create three different iterations. Since this is where the user will spend a majority of their time, I want to make sure the design was efficient and easy to user.

Style Guide:

I aimed to select a style that would remain constant throughout. Below is the color palette and typography. I chose the color scheme to bring color and creativity to the app. I wanted the colors to be bright and positive while also complementing each other.

High Fidelity:

With all the information and design elements in mind, I aimed to create an engaging and easy to user app for users who are looking to find a compatible roommate. I feel this is the best solution to the overall problem as students are matched based on personality, living habits, and personal interests. This creates an easy way for roommates to find those matching similar interests to ensure a positive roommate experience.

Rationale:

The vertical scroll of the home page allows users to view multiple matches at a time and how much of a match the individual is. The user is able to edit their profile to be personalized to their preferences. The messenger feature allows users to reach out to their potential matches to get the know them further as well as lead to the possibility of setting up an in person meet. Besides the personality quiz, which is essential to finding the user a quality match, users are able to filter their home page based on other characteristics. The color and visuals are bright and positive, creating a cohesive design throughout. I was influenced by the plethora of dating apps that are out there. Tinder and Bumble utilize the blind scrolling which I felt was unnecessary as users should be able to few all possible matches. I wanted to mimic the overall features of these popular apps as they are efficient and convenient for users.

Reflection and Next Steps:

After review by my peers, I was recommended critiques I could iterate on. For instance, some basic design elements could have been improved as well as font size improved. Also, I was recommended to create a screen showing users what they are able to edit on their profile. I have the availability to edit a user’s profile but fail to show what elements of the profile users can edit. In the future, a more detailed prototype of smaller features would be beneficial to show these interactions. I was also recommended that users should be able to attach their personal social medias to allow users a better idea of who their potential roommate might be. Lastly, in the future I would look to expanding so that users can sign up under a university, so that their feed is primarily users from the corresponding university to ensure the best results for the user.

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