Rethinking Property Management
Understanding User Journeys, Building a Product Framework // Habit.at
Project Overview
I did client work for Habit.at*, a product aimed at redefining property management for Asia, specifically China and Taiwan. An ever increasing part of the property market there consisted of short- to medium-term rentals, with products previously unable to accommodate a new set of User behaviors.
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I was tasked with devising a product that met these User needs.
*the Product name has been changed for confidentiality purposes
At a Glance
Product Requirements​
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Allow Users to find and manage short- to medium-term housing rentals (3 months - 1 year)
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Allow Users to find services to maintain their property and for their housing needs
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Platforms
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Mobile (Android)
Role
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Product Design
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UX Design
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Visual Design
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Duration
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Research: 1 week
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Design: 1 week
Final Deliverables
The Problem
Making Sense of Things
For this project, I was given a particularly long list of product requirements. The problem involved property management, with much of it trying to simplify rental management and property maintenance. And since I was a renter myself and have used applications like AirBnb as well, I felt like I had a certain familiarity with the problem already.
Organizing My Thoughts
How did I think the industry of property management worked? How did each requirement relate to possible solutions? These were some of the questions that came to my head during initial discussions with my client.
I took notes on Property Management: what I thought were the problems, what my client thought were the problems, and how each product requirement worked to solve those problems.
In order to move on and best validate my thinking without direct access to a testing environment (both my client and their Users were in another region of the world), I had to contextualize my work by devising my own User Journey.
Meet Benny.
Who's Benny?
Benson the Bear (Benny for short), is just your normal bear from China. He's a busy bear, often jumping from place to place looking for work, and doesn't stay in one place very often. This would be fine, if Benny were more like his relatives staying in the forests, mountains, and countryside of China.
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But Benny chooses to stay in a more urban setting, choosing apartments closer to job opportunities. Thus, he spends too much of his timing trying to find places to live, tracking down landlords and convincing them to let him stay for 3-6 months at a time.
A Changing Demographic
Benny is just part of a greater change towards more short-term and rental housing among people in China and more broadly, Asia. We also see an emerging market for platforms that help with renting both homes and apartments.
The period of stay for properties rented this way is somewhere between an Airbnb/hotels and full property ownership. That is, there are a plethora of responsibilities that these renters have that those booking Airbnb/hotels do not - think cleaning, repairs, childcare, etc.
So how does this impact Benny?
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Apart from the need to find places to stay, he needs a better way to maintain it. And because he's moving from place to place, he needs access to services that goes where he goes. It'd be simpler if the whole process of rent, maintenance, and chores fell under one umbrella with one payment process. This is the goal of Habit.at.
A lot of intersections exist between rental and service platforms in terms of function, so the friction due to separate ecosystems seems unnecessary.
In Benny's Shoes (Paws?)
A New Opportunity in Taipei!
Benny's got a new opportunity in Taipei! How would Habit.at help him from point A (finding a new place) to point B (maintaining and paying for his place)?
Benny's moving on up in the world. What now?
As with any big move, Benny is now primarily focus on his living situation. As it pertains to this, his needs and wants are simple:
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Needs to move to a new place (ideally one he likes, for a good price)
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Wants to be able to keep track of properties he likes
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Needs to book the place, sign paperwork
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Needs to pay rent
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Needs to find services (for repair, maintenance, etc.)
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Wants to be able to review and keep services he likes in mind
A tenants and owners relationship when it comes to renting/managing property. The current scope of Habit.at focuses on the tenant side of things.
Understanding Benny's Workflow
Benny's a complex bear, so I needed to brainstorm ways to best meet his needs and wants. Much of my focus was on solidifying User requirements into more distinct actions.
Initial sketches of possible wireframes.
Using each of Benny's specific actions as a possible flow, I then created lo-fidelity mockups.
While obviously fictional, it is important to frame Benny's User journey in determining what is needed to design a product for the User. Both my client and I need to know that I'm headed in the right direction.
With that said, good luck to Benny and his new start in Taipei! Hopefully managing and paying for his place are the last thing on his mind.
Setting a Foundation
Benny's User journey allowed me to check and verify much of my assumptions with the project, allowing me to shift my focus on setting the structure for the product.
Explorations on how the number of feature sets might affect how Users accomplished interacted with the product. I initially started with three, eventually reaching five.
The five feature sets of the product were chosen carefully, taking into account product requirements and common User pathways (think Benny's User Journey) to guide me on what each feature should focus on.
Designing a solid framework required me to think about each feature set would help the User accomplish their goals throughout the product.
On Stylistic Considerations
While not a heavy focus on the work, I did want to address common artistic styles and implications with a heavy Asian User base. Most important was the common theme of using both animals and brighter colors in many Asian marketing efforts.
Just some examples of the kinds of art styles common in Asia, especially prevalent in the LINE communication application.
I tried to convey that stylistic feel with my decisions with icons and colors as well as an inclusion of animal helpers (including Benny!) intended to help show new Users around.
I did not design the elements here, but it helps to convey much of the my stylistic intentions with the product.
Conclusion
Another look at the high fidelity wireframes.
Concluding Thoughts
As one of my first projects working exclusively within a mobile environment, this was work that I learned a lot from. Due to the limited amount of time I had to show my work, I had to prioritize what to focus on. In addition, testing time was limited to the research and findings I was initially given - so creating ways to validate my assumptions was essential. If given more time, I naturally would have liked to test and iterate much more and expand on wireframes for the entirety of the product.
This is why creating User Journeys are so important! Not only are they a great creative exercise, sometimes constraints make them the only way to validate and organize your product. After this experience, I learned to understand their value firsthand.