big red sublet

duration | aug - dec ‘19, jun ‘21 (redesign)

role | ux & ui designer and researcher

team | 3 ux researchers and designers, 2 ux researchers

tools | figma, balsamic, illustrator, fresco

course | human-computer interaction design

research space

Problem

At Cornell, the overall subletting process is difficult to navigate especially for sublessors as they lack information and guidance. Currently, the widely used platform and primary mode of direct communication is Facebook, which is inefficient and lacks many key features.

objectives

empathize

To get a holistic understanding of the current situation and the sentiments of people in this space, we created a standardized interview protocol and conducted 5 user interviews. From these interviews, each member on the team took extensive notes and we then visualized these interviews in an Affinity Diagram.

Affinity Diagram

We created 5 subgroups for this Affinity Diagram:

ideation

Each member in the team individually generated design ideas ranging from tangible products to technological software:

user tasks

 

We generated 5 user tasks to test various aspects of the prototype. These tasks remained consistent when testing various fidelities of our prototype.

prototyping

 

We split the prototyping into 3 distinct phases - low, mid, and high fidelity. With each phase of the process, we conducted user testing and iterated on the designs.

 

low fidelity

• used paper and markers to create wireframes

• users physically interacted with the prototype

takeaways

• need more text to prompt the user on various icons

• lack of support/help features

 

mid fidelity

• used balsamiq to create wireframes

• users clicked through a pdf file for testing

takeaways

• information overload in the explore page

• rethink the positioning of the messaging icon

 

high fidelity

• used Figma to create wireframes

• users clicked through the prototype during testing

takeaways

• lack of feedback messages

• navigation to user profiles is hidden and not consistent

 

final design

 

redesign

 

Following the course, I redeisgned the ui and ux components and created a curated visual aesthetic to align more for the target user group - Cornell students. The addition of more red in the design helps reinforce the community that this product serves. Additionally, the redesign serves to enhance the market differentiating features of this product - matching user groups and in-app messaging.

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core impact

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over the hill