PROPERTY GURU
Redesigning the Singapore rental experience for foreigners especially in conjunction with COVID-19
OVERVIEW:
To redesign the rental service in Singapore by identifying the strength and weaknesses of the rental experience on Property Guru and introduce digitalized features in times of COVID-19.
BACKGROUND
PROJECT TYPE
DELIVERABLES
Group Project, 3 weeks
Web & Mobile Application,
Service Design
User Interviews, Affinity mapping, Competitive analysis, Persona, Customer Journey Map & Service Blueprint, Content Map, MoSCoW, Card Sorting, Site map, User flow, Design System, Usability Testing, Interactive Prototypes.
My role:
UX Researcher
UX Designer
RESEARCH
Background: Founded in 2007, PropertyGuru is the first online property portal in Singapore. It enables property agents to advertise their properties listing online; Property seekers to search for sales/rental properties online.
Making finding a home a straightforward and transparent process for everyone involved.
GOAL
To help people make confident property decisions through relevant content, actionable insights and ”world-class service”.
MISSION
Increasing PropertyGuru's revenue: By allowing the tenants to search for their desired rental listing faster and more efficiently, it can increase the number of property transaction over a shorter period of time, which can then increase revenue for Property Guru.
User Research: We kick-start the project with a user research plan. The research objectives are to:
​
-
Understand what affects tenants’ decision-making process throughout the renting process
-
Map the tenants’ rental experience and uncover touchpoints, channels and emotional journey
-
Identify existing content and content gap in PropertyGuru’s website & mobile application
-
Spot weaknesses and opportunities in the current PropertyGuru’s service design
-
Evaluate the existing design of PropertyGuru and its competitors so as to uncover their good and bad design patterns.
User Interview: We interviewed a total of 9 participants with rental experiences in Singapore to find out the end-to-end rental process and to understand their considerations and frustrations in the rental journey.​
​
By using affinity mapping to group the findings provided by our interviewees, we analyse and pinpointed to 5 main insights.
KEY FINDINGS
Difficulty in finding content:
Tenants were unable to find relevant content such as house rules and other occupants’ background information on PropertyGuru. These contents are part of their selection criteria for desired renting units.
Unresponsive property agents:
Tenants contacted property agents to book house viewing however unresponsive agents resulted in potential tenant's frustration.
Difficulty in comparison:
Tenants found it hard to compare their shortlisted listings.
Remote circumstances:
Tenants might not make it for physical house viewing all the time, hence they would appreciate alternative options for viewing.
Importance of house viewing:
Tenants felt that it was necessary to validate online information by house viewing in their rental process. Most of the time information shown online often differs from reality or there might be hidden rules or restrictions only make known to the tenants when they go for house viewing.
SYNTHESIS
Personas: We also came up with a primary & secondary personas to further empathise with tenants renting in Singapore. The two personas were created to represent tenants with varying goals, needs and frustrations
PRIMARY PERSONA - TINA
SECONDARY PERSONA - JON
Customer Journey Map: The customer journey map for Tina and Jon are very similar except the ‘Enquiry & Validation’ stage. This is because Jon is currently overseas and he could not attend physical house viewing. Thus, he needs an alternative option of virtual house viewing.
INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
Content Map: From the customer journey map, we categorize the personas’ actions into 3 main stages -- ‘Awareness’, ‘Consideration’, and ‘Decision’. We did a content inventory to identify the existing content that will address users' needs in each stage. Then, we use the content map to pinpoint the content gaps that are currently missing.
Service Blueprint: We then created a service blueprint using tenants’ actions that were identified from the customer journey map together with probable various internal touchpoints within PropertyGuru stakeholder to identify the existing service design gaps. From there, we ideate and slot in the possible changes and affected slots in purple.
.png)
IDEATION
Feature Prioritization:
We did a competitive analysis with PropertyGuru’s main competitors such as 99.co and SRX to identify what are the common features as well as to source out for potential features that will be useful for our redesign.
​
In consideration of the tight timeline we had, we apply the MoSCoW method and did a feature prioritisation with the common features identified from our competitive analysis as well as the features we ideate to fill the gaps identified in our content map.
​
Features addressing problems that more than half of our users raised concern about and features that can provide PropertyGuru with a competitive edge over their competitors will be put under "Must Have".
​
Features that have a lesser business impact as compared to “Must Have” will be put under "Should Have".
​
Features that are nice-to-have with little impacts on tenants will be put under "Could Have".
​
For this phase of the project, we worked on the features that fell under "Must Have" and "Should Have".
Must
Should
Could
-
Listings' details comparison table
-
Online booking system for viewing
-
Updates of expired listings
-
Personalised checklist for viewing
-
Live Virtual Viewing
-
Indication of tenant's lifestyle preferences
-
Personalised comparing feature
-
Recommendation of best-matched listings
-
Calendar for scheduled viewing(s)
-
Apartment layout plan
-
Agent's responsiveness ratings
-
Indication of how many people are interested in the same listing
-
Indication of offer deadline to potential tenants
-
Integrate in-app chat function with agents
DESIGN SYSTEM
Design System: We build our redesign based on the existing design of PropertyGuru has because they are the pioneer in the online rental listing industry in Singapore and users already have a fixed impression about the PropertyGuru platform and their design system, so changing their design system would not be a wise choice.
.
.png)
.png)
Voice and tone guideline: We want to be seen as a mentor whom users will trust to help them find ideal homes. We want to share our knowledge and experience to give users guidance and insights at the right moment.
We should be confident, but humble. We want to convey information in a straightforward and simple way that users could relate. We hope that users will trust that we’re taking actions in their best interest, without judgment or motive.
UI Patterns: With Xavier taking the lead of the UI pattern library, we unify on the colours used and make sure the UI is intuitive and easy to use.
Usability Testing: With PropertyGuru’s goal and mission in mind, and design system established, we begin fleshing out our website and app prototype. We did 2 rounds of usability testing with 6 participants each.
​
Pluses & Deltas: We used the 'pluses and deltas' analysis method to synthesis our usability test results. The key insights were incorporated into our design improvement below.
DESIGN ITERATION
Problem: Tenants find it hard to compare shortlisted listings as they have to open multiple browser tabs to compare listings details.
​
Solution: We created the single page comparison table for listing details and has been tested to work well for tenants in the usability testing as it has the right amount of information they need.
Iteration 1
Existing
Iteration 2
Problem: The current house viewing booking process is done through the agent and is always being bottlenecked by the slow turnaround time of the agent.
​
Solution: In the redesign, we introduce an online booking feature for viewing based on agent availability and as well as a Live virtual viewing feature
​
With the feedback of inconsistent feel of the website due to the lack of iconic red branding, we switch up the colors to make the page more consistent and aligned with the branding.
Existing
Iteration 1
Iteration 1
Iteration 2
Problem: Users are using their mobile phone to take photos and make notes in their native notepad app while verifying multiple subjects during viewing.
​
Solution: We Introduced a pre-populated personalised checklist based on listing and profiling information with the flexibility to add more checkpoints that are integrated within the PropertyGuru Mobile App
​
As we received feedback on the tiring infinite scroll, we grouped checkpoints into collapsible categories, added sticky "add" checkpoint feature at the bottom of the page for easy addition and replaced the "tick" icon with the word "save" for easy readability.
Iteration 2
Problem: Users feel restricted to only see a limited number of listings that match their preferences fully as profiling info was used to filter out listings.
​
Solution: We use the profiling information to highlight listings that matches the information given by the users instead. System’s recommendation tag highlights that matched preference.
Iteration 1
Iteration 2
Problem: Getting profile information from users right at the beginning but showing results only at the comparison page causes disconnection in understanding why PropertyGuru needs tenants information.
​
Solution: Getting profile information from users right before comparison page shows users directly the reason why giving the information is useful for their search process.
What is next? With every project, there’s always room for improvement. Given more time, we would like to validate the latest redesign with another round of user testing. Due to time constraints, only specific mobile and website screens, according to the touchpoints identified from the customer journey map, were developed. Thus, we would like to continue developing the full features for both the website and mobile platforms.
In the next step, we would like to explore the "COULD HAVE" features and look into methods to enhance the online service for property agents and landlords, who are also the key stakeholders of the rental service.
​
My takeaways: My greatest takeaway for this project was learning to timebox our process, with the flexibility to put in more effort for certain parts without jeopardizing the other deliverables. This was especially important to ensure that we were on schedule even when we are short on manpower, and still had sufficient time to review our process to make necessary changes, avoiding any last-minute rushing of work.
​
Working in a team for this project was a very valuable experience. We learned to give one another constructive feedback while covering each other in the things we are weak in. We also make sure to communicate often and update on everyone's progress so that our direction is aligned and on track with no one doing double work or missed out on any activities.
​
Here’s a big shout out to my awesome teammates Xavier Ting and Yang Ran for all the support! We work hard, we strive forward and we successfully pulled through these 11 days!
NEXT STEPS
