Introduction
Lichluchit is a social enterprise project that helps apartment seekers to overcome gaps in information in social media posts about potential apartments – even before visiting it.
The information uploaded to the website is uploaded and maintained by the community and AI.
Client
Enterprise
My Role
UX/UI Design, UX Research
Dates
Aug. 2020 - Nov. 2020
Tools
Challenge
Nowadays, the most popular to search for a new home is sifting through many Facebook groups, sites like Yad2 or Win-Win. The inherent problem with these kinds of postings is that the renter is the one posting it.
This leads to huge gaps between the description of the apartments and the actual apartments. An apartment’s actual size, noise levels in the surrounding area, construction projects nearby are just some of the “concealed” details left out deliberately from the posting.
Today, these gaps are only filled when the seeker visits the apartment. These cause loss of time, money, energy, and frustration from an already intense process.
Project Goals
to maximize authentically well-rounded descriptions
Research Goals
Competitive Analysis
I started by familiarizing myself with the existing apartment search platforms like Yad2, Win-win, Doron, and Facebook groups.
My competitive analysis produced the following insights:
- None of the platforms provide an outlet focusing on the sharing of unbiased information about apartments by the community.
- Almost all information regarding apartments is provided by the owner of the apartment or someone on his behalf (like a realtor), and no incentive for objectiveness exists.
- Additional information, not provided by the owner, is scarce. For example, only some of the information about the apartment’s surrounding areas exists on Yad2’s, and the list price might be in a reply to a Facebook group's post.
Phase 1 - Survey
After seeing there isn’t any platform that tries to bring an objective, relevant information about apartments, I’ve built a survey using Google Forms to try and get a better understanding of the willingness of apartment seekers to use a platform such as this and to ratify their motivations, needs, gaps, and frustrations when seeking apartments.
Survey Statistics :
After reaching my goal of 15 participants, I began identifying and classifying participants' responses based on their answer to the question:
“During your last search for an apartment, what things did you discover about apartments only after visiting them? We will appreciate it if you describe as many reasons as possible in detail”
I’ve detected 16 different themes that eventually fell into 12 categories. Each of the categories represents the mains gaps in information this platform tries to minimize. These 12 categories will help the users to scan and sort the posts and failures about an apartment. When a user posts something new, he would be able to easily tag failures in any of the categories aforementioned, alongside a free-text description.
Phase 2 - Card Sorting
After detecting these 12 categories – I’ve created an online card sorting mission using the Optimal Workshop platform for 10 participants. Each participant was instructed to give priority to each category by sorting them from 1 (most important) to 12 (least important).
There were 2 objectives to this research phase:
- Getting primary feedback regarding the categories
Although most of the participants have participated in both phases, they haven't seen the categories labels from the first phase. Therefore, their feedback about the clarity of the category labels was constructive. - Giving each category a score of importance to sort by
Each post will receive a visual indication, indicating the gaps between what is advertised and what is offered.
The user will then be able to easily see these by scanning the page with his or her eyes.
Here is a sample of sorting by a few participants:
After reaching my goal for 10 participants, I’ve calculated the average importance score of all participants for each category, as can be shown here:
Personas
Based on the research findings, I’ve created two personas, Liron and Itay, to design a desirable app experience.
General Flow
I've created a general flow to understand the structure of the website.
Initial Sketches
Before moving to Figma for designing high fidelity prototypes, I started by sketching designs to see what ideas I can come up with.
Mini-Design System
I had created a mini-system that allowed us to quickly access the exact font styles used across the site. Though it would be small, my mini-system would empower us to focus on the experience and usability, rather than having to guess at colors and font styles.
Typography
The slightly rounded edges of Rubik typeface make it unique and fun to use while keeping things classy and sharp.
Moreover, Rubik supports both Hebrew and English letters.
Aa Bb Cc Dd Ee Ff
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
! @ # $ % ^ & * ( )
Colors
Primary and grays
Violet Symbolizes wisdom and sensitivity, and has an incredibly sage hue that is experienced and enlightened, making it a great counselor. Furthermore, violet holds more blue undertones than purple, making it a familiar color to users but still unique.
Secondary colors
I've created a secondary color scheme with the following colors, which each tag has its distinctive color, to compose a visual difference between the tags.
Tags Icons
Alongside its color, each tag has an exclusive icon, which I had created, that represents its category.
Buttons
Dropdown
Custom Illustrations
Then I’ve created several illustrations inspired by these design guidelines to complement the theme.
High-Fidelity Design
Keeping users’ needs and pain-points in mind, I settled on a final version of the design, creating a high-fidelity prototype.
Home Page
This page contains a search section in the center of the page to attract the user’s attention and call them to action. Alongside it is an illustration of a city under construction, to emphasize the idea and purpose of this platform.
Results Page
I decided to display the relevant anonymous “trash” posts in a 200-meterradius from the apartment as shown in the Google Maps frame to the left of theresults. This is relevant to describing the surroundings of any one apartment. Each post contains visual indicatorsabout its distance, categories and importance – all of which can be further filtered by.
Adding new post
The “New Trash” button is displayed on each screen to encourage the user to add new post. We use an NLP classification algorithm to analyzed user’s input to improve the experience, shortcut the post’s creation time and increase its accuracy.
Edge cases
I created unique components for each edge case with distinctive illustrations fitting the website's concept in addition to CTA buttons for a better and more complete experience for the users.
What's next
Importance indication
For now, although importance isn’tinclusive and fixed for all the users I made an informed decision to use the average position from the card sorting mission of each category, to representits score because it's an MVP. I'm intending to give user's the ability to choose which categories are more relevant for them.
Learnings
- Giving back to the community
As I started this project as a personal favor to a friend while in a busy period of my life. But, I’m glad I’ve seenit through to the end.
Other than the knowledge and experience I’ve gained from this project (in particularthe design and research phases), this site helped me a lot in the process of finding a Tel Aviv apartment for myself! I sure am glad this could be a real and practical use for the community. - Creating an interface that utilizes an NLP algorithm
I am grateful for the opportunity to investigate the field of user experience with Natural Language Processing (NLP) analysis with guidance from Danit, our NLP specialist. I’ve learned about how NLP can affect the user and improve his or her experience. I’ve also learned how tocontend and correct for unwanted results from algorithms that aren't 100% correct by creating well-suited solutions in the UI for those situations.
Thank You
I'd like to say thank you to Yuval, our Software engineer, and Danit, our NLP specialist, for being awesome teammates!
Thank you for supporting my ambitions and craziness, I’m grateful for all yours feedback throughout the process, and for the supportive environment we’ve created to helped me to learnand grow as a designer!
I believe we’ve created a wonderful project and hope it will help people in their search for the perfect apartment :)
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