Viva Green Homes
The Client: Our client, Viva Green Homes, is a niche realty site that connects buyers, sellers, and realty agents in the eco-friendly housing market, promoting opportunities and education for consumers and matching them with experienced professionals in the market.
The Task: Design a web-based "Lead Generation" feature to better match users (buyers/sellers) with the right eco-certified realtor/agent.
​
Duration: 2.5 weeks
Tools: Google Docs, Google Forms, Sketch, InVision
The Team: Sheldon Mojica, Molly Fu (Lead Researcher)
My Role: As the lead designer, I prioritized usability and struck a harmonious balance in user interface (UI) design. I ensured that every design choice aligned with both user preferences and the overarching business objectives, validating each decision through meticulous scrutiny.
Understanding the Client
When beginning the research phase of this project my partner and I sought to understand the perspective of our client as well as basic knowledge about the real-estate industry.
Kick-Off Call key takeaways:
Data:
A key component of the product relies on a collection of data. This data is crucial in understanding the user's needs as well as matching them with the right agent who is qualified to fulfill their needs. At the time, the primary metric for collecting user information was site analytics, to which we were granted read-only access.
Value:
One existing issue is the lack of effectiveness in educating users on the value of the agents listed on the site, and whether their experience in the eco-friendly realty market is beneficial to users. Buyers/sellers may not know the importance of/or how these realtors are differentiated from other agents. We should be able to answer the question: why would someone want one of our agents over a competitor's?
​
Pairing:
The current pairing metric for users and agents was primarily based on location. This limited metric prevented a more personalized matching system.
Demographic Focus: Our client requested we focus our design to attract the interest of millennials.
Understanding the User
We needed to understand who it was we were designing for. Knowing we were focusing our design on millennial home buyers/sellers we decided it would be best to research what it meant to be a "Millennial".
​
Millennials:
Generation born roughly between 1982 and 2004. The millennial generation is the firstborn in the digital age, specifically the rise of the internet and social media. Technology is incorporated into their daily lives and therefore plays a major role in their social development.
“Motivated and goal-oriented, millennials are confident in themselves and the future”
— Excerpt from Millennials Go To College by Neil Howe and William Strauss.
User Survey
After familiarizing ourselves with the various characteristics of millennials, my partner and I decided it be best to survey this demographic to grasp their understanding of eco-friendly home feature benefits.
Creating Personas
Based on the information we gathered on our target user we decided it is best to create personas to help develop our designs. (below is an example of the specific criteria we concentrated on when developing the various personas).
Competitive Analysis
To understand how our client stood aside their competitors we conducted a competitive analysis to help us understand what the industry leaders were doing right and what aspects of their sites we could incorporate into our design to improve the user's experience.
Our competitive research revealed that the vast majority of our competitors did not incorporate information about "eco-friendly" living or education on the topic. We gathered users to test each of our competitor's sites; we determined that HomeLight incorporated an onboarding process that would best satisfy our users as well as fulfill the needs of our client.
Based on the usability test we conducted we found that users preferred HomeLight's on-boarding process over other competitors. However, the one complaint we found was that users did not like having to input their personal information before having the opportunity to view potential agent matches.
Research Conclusions
We concluded that a majority of our users were supportive of incorporating eco-friendly features into their future homes but were uneducated on the actual benefits of these features. We also found that users preferred the onboarding process our competitor HomeLight incorporated, but kept in mind that requiring users to input their personal information was a big no-no.
Design Ideation
Armed with the knowledge collected during the research phase of our project we felt comfortable with beginning the design phase of our process.
User/Agent Pairing Metric
As stated earlier, Viva Green Home's primary pairing metric before receiving this project was location. Based on my team's research we determined that Location, Budget, Property Type, and Eco-Features were the most important information needed to best determine the realtor agent for a particular user. This allowed users to find an agent in their area who has experience selling a similar home within the user's budget, while also having an eco-certification that matched their particular preferences.
User Flow/Card Sorting
Having determined the pairing metrics of Location, Budget, Property Type and Eco-Features the next step was to determine what order was most logical to our users to provide the best experience during the on-boarding process. We resolved this through a simple card-sorting exercise.
WireFrames
With users' needs in mind, I was now ready to begin creating wireframes, keeping in mind that I wanted to create an on-boarding experience that took the stress out of finding the right eco-certified realty agent.
Prototype
Subsequent
Rollouts
-
Create a “blog” page and enhance the email subscription function. This will allow users to learn more about what they can do to encourage an eco-friendly lifestyle, as well as promote further user involvement.
-
Conduct more research on realtors' experience with the site. Find a better solution of “commission of compensation” to identify the best way for agents to compensate Viva to receive leads.
Final Conclusion
This type of project was an excellent opportunity for me to develop and demonstrate my user experience skills, and I appreciated the opportunity to better understand Viva Green Homes and improve their lead generation capability.