Ideal Roomie
Find the perfect mate, together a home we'll create.
Personal Project
Solo Work
April 2022, 6 days
April 2022, 6 days
Ideal Roomie is a startup company aiming to provide urban residents with a simple and secure platform to find roommates in their city. It appeals particularly to the millennial and Gen Z demographics. Its brand should be fun, with distinct personalities, while also aligning with the expectations of the target users.
This was a personal project I did solely at 2022 within 6 days, covering user research, product strategy and product design.
To gain a better understanding of people's need and challenges they faced, I conducted 1st round of semi-structural interview with people who had experiencing renting a place with a roommate.
However, the results weren't what I hoped. The first few interviewees didn't seem like they will be the user of this product. Some stated "I need a roommate, but don't mind who they are," while others were lucky to find ideal roommates through school connections.
To proximize the interview, I decided to do a quick recap and identify what's wrong with it. I analyzed the underlying factors behind these fortunate or effortless situations, where I realized they can fit in a 3x3 grid divided by:
Their Connection With the City & Their Emotional Need...
Then I Realized I Have a Blind Spot.
Our core user should be the ones with most motives, sitting at the top right corner, with need in emotion and unfamiliarity with the city, whom I neglect in my first round of interview. So, on the 2nd round of interview, I revised the recruitment criteria and reshaped the question, decided to focus on people fit profile in this area to generate the persona.
Through the 2nd round of interview, I identified 2 personas with great need of finding a proper roommate:
We could not resolve all the questions in the MVP version of this startup product. At this stage, our priority is to understand the product landscape and identify where we can create the most meaningful impact.
To validate our user research insights and uncover potential opportunity spaces, I conducted a competitive analysis focused on the following user experience question:
How do current products support our users? Where do they excel, and where do they fall?
Findings:
A
There is a lack of [Social Apps] on the market that meet the need for [Finding Roommates] in the market.
This can be an opportunity or a hard challenge unable to solve/make money with.
B
[Tool] and [Find Housing] are low-frequency basic needs, while [Social] and [Find Roommates] are low-frequency soft needs.
Findings:
A
Finding the right roommate starts with building relationships; the nature of [Tool-based] platforms makes it hard to meet this need, due to the lack of [Social] features.
B
[Social] features can be added as a key element, but they must be supported by [Tool-based] functionalities to strengthen user engagement.
C
Expand the focus from [Finding Roommates/Housing] to cover the [Entire Co-living Process] could be an opportunity.
A positive experience with a shared living arrangement gives me the motivation to keep going in a new city. And roommates are the most important factor here.
When I’m new to a city and don’t have the opportunity to meet potential roommates, I want a [quick, low-effort way] to [find], and [build effective connections] with strangers who share the same needs and maintain a good relation throughout the journey so I can enjoy a harmonious co-living experience in the new environment.
