Realtr

Realtr is a real estate application designed as a mobile-first alternative to popular browser-based real estate websites. The goal was to recreate the excitement and wonder a user feels when scrolling thru a dating app, but this time via looking thru homes.

The biggest difference between Realtr and its competitors is that Realtr’s target user base isn’t exclusively people looking to buy or sell a house. Realtr sets to serve a large community of people who love to continuously scroll thru house listings for enjoyment purposes. Besides taking a listing fee, Realtr plans on generating revenue by display advertisements between listings.

Process

As the sole UI/UX designer of Realtr, I’ve divided the process thus far into the following steps:

Research

I began this project by conducting analyses on multiple competitors. I quickly came to the conclusion that although real estate websites were incredibly popular, none have become popularized on the mobile market. To combat this, I wanted to create an alternative with a mobile first design.

Problem

Real estate listings feature a lot of information, which is too overwhelming for mobile phone users. I want to redefine how real estate listings display on mobile interfaces.

Solution

I need to conduct research on which real estate information is most important to mobile phone users, and discover a convenient and minimalist way to display this information to users on a mobile application.

Key Findings

I continued the research process by holding surveys on a select group of people. I specified this survey to social media users who also like home renovation tv shows, as I felt like they would be the best demographic for understanding real estate information relevancy. I came to a few key findings:

Define

After looking thru survey data, I came to the realization that largest user base for real estate applications aren’t house buyers, but house browsers.

I decided that my goal was to create an application that would be the ultimate house browsing experience. There is a completely untapped market of people who use real estate apps as a source of entertainment. This is fantastic because, unlike home buyers, these users will use this application unlimitedly. I created a persona for a “real estate junkie”, a type of person I specifically want to target with this application:

Ideate

After understanding my target demographic, I started to brainstorm and create a sitemap and wireframes for the application that I wanted to design for browsing users:

Prototype

The click-thru prototype of Realtr has received excellent user feedback along with some phenomenally interesting data.

Key Findings

• Most “house browsers” (users not actually looking to move) will not click the “For Rent” tab. They only want to see homes that are for sale.
• Users looking to buy will quickly swipe thru homes with poor photo quality, even if it’s under their price range and in a well-desired area.
• Users are less likely to favorite a home if its interior is poorly furnished, even if it’s under their price range and a brand new house.
• The interface’s map needs to be big enough to read, but it should still not take the user’s eye away from photos of houses.

Collecting browsing and buying data from users was a fantastic help in understanding what to work on next: the interface for users who are selling a house.

What’s Next

The next step in this project will be collecting data and designing a separate interface for home sellers/real estate agents.

My goal is to create an interface that provides feedback for sellers. When a seller logs in, they will be notified about how many people have viewed and favorited their house in a way that creates excitement in the seller. My hypothesis is that by using this “social media engagement validation” method correctly, sellers will be persuaded to take higher quality photos for the app, and enjoy the selling process more.

Thus my next step is researching and collecting user data to understand the emotions people experience selling homes and how to make the selling experience more exciting and enjoyable. After this, I plan on collecting data on how push notifications effect user’s experience for buying/selling homes.