Case Study
Research | UX/UI Design
Project Overview
During my summer internship at CoreLogic, I was part of a team that was tasked with undertaking an investigation into a potential solution to help users navigate the website OneHome more efficiently. OneHome is a real estate property site that lists accurate property listings and empowers realtors and potential homebuyers through virtual collaboration to match users to their new dream home. Through our research, we found it most efficient to assist users with an AI chatbot feature that would help them to navigate through the site and more easily narrow down options for property listings based on certain aspects of homes.
As a UX/UI design intern, I worked with a technical product management intern, and a software development intern, and we were mentored with the help of more experienced members on our team. In early stages, we did face difficulties in balancing the demands of technical scope, what users may want, and our internship timeline. Through this experience, I feel I had a better handle on learning what to prioritize in UX design for a product, as well as handle pivots in the design and development process.
Role
UX/UI design intern
Our Challenge
Timeline
June 2023 - August 2023 (10 weeks)
Our top problems for this were figuring out how to help people find their next home via OneHome, figure out how to best give users info on properties, and determining the quality of available information on OneHome. The main goals we had in mind were simplifying the search process, making search intuitive and fluid, and providing the user with help consistently throughout the interface of the OneHome website.
Keeping all of these points in mind, as well as the restraints of our timeline and ability to alter OneHome, we set to work on researching the user base for OneHome, and figuring out what specific needs they had in the process of looking for properties.
Objectives
Target our potential audience in need of new housing in urban areas
Analyze and identify ways to make the homebuying process simpler
Deliver high-fidelity mockups of the desktop version of HomeQuest’s site, with a focus on searching and saving properties
Research/Empathize
We first set about research by identifying what user groups we would need and recruiting users. Since OneHome is primarily used by home buyers and realtors, we interviewed one user from each group to get a general overview on their thoughts on OneHome, the search process, and potential pain points.
Key Insights
From our interviews, we were able to find some main insights into the thought process of users when navigating OneHome.
AI comes off as novel yet intimidating
Words are more useful than images when searching
Users prefer inputting text as opposed to sliders/range tools
Users aren’t very aware of all features that OneHome has
From our main user interviews, we also were able to form provisional personas to represent our two groups, as well as to guide us throughout the rest of the design process.
Based on our two main user groups, Realtors and Home Buyers, we honed in on a specific persona for each: Sammy the Seller and Brittney the Buyer.
Personas
Ideate
During the ideation process, we identified multiple opportunities for feature development or improvement:
Provide clarity on available features
Allow as much uniformity between devices as possible
Allow flexibility in user inputs during search
Prioritize certain search criteria
Leverage data provided to us
Based on these, we determined as a team that one opportunity for a feature could be utilizing AI in the form of a chatbot to assist users to find a home that fits their lifestyle and needs.
Design Studio
As the designer, I was tasked with early stages of determining how the chatbot should look and exist in the interface. I set to work by taking inspiration from other design patterns for chat functions on sites, and made variations in initial sketches.
On the right are my initial inspiration images to guide my process in designing a chatbot and incorporating common design patterns and variations.
My initial sketches were mostly variations on a chatbot that would still seem intuitive to users. I experimented with adding various features for search, whether that be manual inputs, buttons, or even image search so users could helpfully find the home that they want. When discussing with the team, we would end up narrowing this down much more to something simpler.
After discussions with my team, we focused on priorities of helping users navigate specific listings, and making an easily identifiable chatbot on the OneHome property page. I set about creating a more high-fidelity wireframe and initial prototype in Figma that serves these functions.
Initial Prototype
My chatbot design can be seen in the above image on the left side. This placement was for temporary purposes only. Initially, the team determined that this chatbot should exist only on a specific individual property page and assist users with finding more information about that specific property. In the next stage, we tested this initial prototype with users who were in the process of buying a home, and saw what their thoughts were.
Validate
After initial prototyping, our team had multiple discussions about if we were headed in the right direction in the user-centered design process. I argued that our feature was being limited by our timeline and we were focusing more on the needs of the business rather than the needs of the user. Initial usability tests with our first prototype led me to believe this, as we did get feedback that the chatbot seemed out of place and redundant on the properties page.
Usability Testing and Revised Prototype
For our first usability test, we recruited two more users and gave them a scenario to find information about local schools using the chatbot located in the property details page. This allowed our team to realize that the first variation on the chatbot was getting mixed results for various reasons:
The chatbot’s placement on the property details page didn’t make sense
The chatbot button looked too similar to other buttons/icons on the page
There was a greater need for more predefined topics and less open ended questioning
Visual indicators/highlights were helpful for guiding users around the page
In meetings with the majority of our OneHome team, we decided to alter some aspects of our chatbot while still salvaging what we could with our 10 week timeline in mind.
During our pivot, we decided to put a greater prioritization on what users stated would be helpful, and moved our chatbot to have a greater scope on property data. This involved moving it to the main homepage, with the potential to be used as something that could search through all data.
For example, if a user wanted homes in a specific area near schools with a 5 star rating, this could immediately show all listings with that criteria. Additionally, based on our interviews and usability tests, we determined our chatbot could use a more conversational tone to have a friendlier and more personable feel.