Offerpad Buy Site
OVERVIEW
Redesign of a tool for users to browse homes in cities across the U.S.
We kicked off the project with a one-week Google Design Sprint, which helped us better define the problem and involve a broader team in the design process. Our sprint efforts centered around improving existing functionality on the Buy Site and testing new features. In V2, we focused on using our test findings to enhance the experience to meet user needs. While I was involved in all aspects of the project, I took the lead on all UX research and mobile design for account creation, saving, and tagging homes.
Role
UX Designer & Researcher
Collaborators
Prod, Design & Eng
Platforms
Mobile web & Desktop
Timeline
3 months, 2021-2022
THE PROBLEM
Customers interested in buying homes struggle to find homes matching their buying criteria quickly and easily using the Offerpad Buy Site.
To begin understanding user pain points, we watched sessions of users interacting with the Buy Site in FullStory. We discovered while users were in the right place, the tool wasn’t working as expected. This helped us identify a few key areas for improvement.
Old Designs
DESIGN CHALLENGE
How might we improve Offerpad’s Buy Site platform to increase user engagement and boost account creation?
SOLUTION
A fluid end-to-end experience to browse and save homes
PROCESS
How did we approach the redesign?
The sprint included project managers, developers, designers, and industry experts, which gave us a broader lens to begin to understand and solve for user pain points identified on the existing Buy Site. Following the sprint, our design team transitioned focus towards using our test findings to identify the most important features to enhance and build to increase engagement and sign ups.
01 Understanding the User
PERSONAS & SCENARIOS
I created personas to help humanize each user group for our team and build empathy.
Bill is our primary persona - an experienced homebuyer who is actively browsing for homes online. While Bill is ready to buy, our secondary persona, Brielle, encompasses more of a “dreamer” as she is in the research stage. Creating personas helped us identify who we are supporting in the redesign efforts, and understand how we could capitalize on Bill’s motivations and minimize his frustrations using the Buy Site.
COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS
Our project manager conducted and shared a competitive analysis, showcasing a side-by-side feature comparison across our main industry competitors.
I used these findings as a starting point to understand which features were most common across our competitors. The ability to create an account and save properties were 2 features Offerpad did not have, but all 4 competitors currently had. These stood out to me as key improvement opportunities to meet user and business goals.
HOW MIGHT WE EXERCISE
We asked “How Might We” questions and voted on the most important questions using blue dots.
This exercise helped us look for opportunities and challenges, and prioritize which questions to focus on during the sprint.
USER JOURNEY MAP
I mapped Bill’s journey from the start of his search to saving and sharing a home.
Mapping each step helped highlight key areas for improvement and gaps in the current flow.
02 Starting the Design
PAPER WIREFRAMES
We divided into 2 groups to sketch ideas; my group generated ideas for saving a home, logging in, and viewing saved homes.
We used blue dots to mark interesting parts and create a heat map. Then we conducted a speed critique to quickly discuss the highlights of each solution. Then each participant chose one solution and voted with a pink dot. Finally, the Decider made the final decision, marked as a pink dot with the letter N.
My sketches were selected because they introduced a way to entice users to create an account and provided an idea around how users might leave notes regarding why they like a home.
DIGITAL PROTOTYPE
I carried my physical wireframe ideas into the digital space.
I explored how users could rate a home they liked and select chips to help remember the reason(s) why. We also explored a way for users to edit or add all their desired filters at once instead of individually, which was a commonality amongst all our competitors.
USABILITY STUDY
I wrote a test plan including tasks around searching for homes, filtering, viewing the map/list view, and saving a home.
The objective of the study was to gain insight on ease of task completion, happiness/satisfaction, likelihood of using particular features, and usefulness/value of different features to inform future design decisions. I chose unmoderated testing because it allowed me to reach a broad audience with greater speed and flexibility, and participants could complete the tasks at their own pace, on their own time, and in their own homes.
Study type
Unmoderated usability study
Device type
Mobile
Location
United States, remote
Participants
10 participants
Key Findings
03 Refining the Design
MOCKUPS
Saved Homes
Users mentioned without fixed points, it could be difficult to gage where to set the slider. I changed the component from a slider to a heart scale in order to increase the ease of comparison across 5+ homes. During testing, users also selected their top 3 tags of 9 options: 9/10 said price, 5/10 said size, 5/10 said location, which informed the pre-defined chips.
I revised the saved homes experience and we modified the property details page based on user feedback.
Property Details
Users expressed confusion over how to know how many photos there are and where they could go to view more. We added the dots to indicate users could swipe to view photos, and added the 3D icon to open the photo and walkthrough experience. Users also mentioned scrolling as a frustration, so we added horizontal page anchors to help users access desired content quickly.
KEY MOCKUPS
The usability testing findings helped inform design modifications to our mobile prototype.
Some key changes included modifying the map and filter view to show how many properties were available and how many filters were currently applied. Also, we added a label for the house icon to address confusion around its meaning on the map and list view.
HIGH-FIDELITY PROTOTYPE
The mobile prototype captures the user’s experience from entering a location to filtering and saving homes.
01 Begin Browsing & Draw Search
Users can begin their journey by browsing homes near their current location. They can then use the draw search feature to narrow their search to a particular neighborhood of interest. Once they apply the search, the drawn area is highlighted and the map auto-zooms to show results fitting the new boundary.
02 Filter & Sort
By clicking on the filter button, users open a page that contains all of their possible filters. They can narrow their search by the most popular criteria such as price, number of beds/baths, and property type, or scroll further to find more detailed criteria.
Users can also access the sort drop down from the upper right to change the order the homes populate in their list.
03 Save & Tag
After users click the heart on a home and sign into their account they can save a rating for the home. They can assign a certain amount of hearts to a home, add a custom tag, and/or select from the pre-defined tags. After they finish their selections, they can easily compare the ones they liked and choose which homes they want to share or learn more about.
RESPONSIVE DESIGN
We designed mobile-first, and used our mobile prototype as a guide to develop a new layout for desktop.
While on mobile the saved homes rating feature presents as a slide-in over the bottom of the screen, on desktop it is a slide-in over the bottom of the card (top image). For the payment calculator component, on mobile the editor became a full-page modal and on desktop a panel that slides in from the right. We kept the horizontal tabs consistent across the property details page on mobile and desktop, and centered the content on desktop (bottom image).
04 Going Forward
IMPACT
I helped to successfully boost account creation and increase user engagement, fulfilling our business and user goals.
I spearheaded the research and design efforts on creating accounts on the Buy Site. Before, Offerpad did not prompt users to make an account or sign in, therefore, this data was never captured or stored. Through user testing, I captured sentiment around account creation and used findings from the competitive analysis to push for the idea of capitalizing on the users’ motivation to save homes and prompting sign in at this time. By introducing a simple, easy-to-use form to access desired features on the Buy Site, we now have thousands of users with Offerpad accounts.
I also led user research for the project, including creating test plans, watching sessions, and analyzing results, which heavily contributed to our success in increasing user engagement. Two new features I designed and tested were adding tags to homes and the payment calculator. In introducing these features we saw users leaving tags on saved homes and engaging with the sliders on the calculator, which led to an increase in average session length on the desktop and mobile web experience. Through improving existing components and functionality we also saw an increase in monthly visitors and a decrease in bounce rate.
WHAT I LEARNED
I learned the importance of aligning on project goals with stakeholders early in the project, and involving them throughout the research and design process.
My biggest challenge on this project was tying user research to business impact. From the business side, one goal that was always part of the conversation was increasing buyer leads, which meant more users clicking on the “Request Info” button on a property details page. My challenge was communicating how user needs and pain points on the property details page should drive our design changes, which then can produce more buyer leads. Through research, I was able to understand ways the page could be improved by for example adding page anchors, creating a clearer way to view photos, providing a clear CTA, and introducing a payment calculator. By investing in these research, design, and development efforts we organically saw an increase in the quantity of buyer leads. This demonstrated the importance of grounding design decisions in research and identifying the cause of the problem to successfully reach our goals.