Product Artifacts For Finding An Accommodation Online

Source: pinterest

India is currently young, with a median age of 29 years. It has a large population of millennials, who form a majority of the organized workforce. Skilled millennials migrate from city to city for employment. For various reasons, these millennials and others seek to live in shared accommodation. There are many platforms providing these services online. Let’s deep dive into understanding the needs and pain points of the users and create user personas and user journey maps.

Part 1: User Research

Target Audience

The target audience will be young professionals between the age group of 20 to 30 living in the metro cities of India. They prefer to share accommodation to reduce the expense incurred towards rent and to be with like-minded people.

• The total population of India is 1.3 billion
• Assuming the urban-rural divide in India is 30:70, We get urban population of 0.39 billion
• Major metros comprise approximately 20% of the total Indian urban population which is 78 million
• Assuming the age group (20 to 30) obtain 30% — 23.4 million
• Considering that 20% of the population prefers shared accommodation gives us 4.68 million potential users

Sample Size Calculation

Source: survey monkey

Objectives

• To analyze and understand the requirements and pain points in finding accommodation and a flatmate/roommate.

Hypothesis

• The young migrant professionals would be interested in finding accommodation that caters to their logistical and recreational factors.
• These professionals would be inclined to get a flatmate or roommate based on their preferences.
• Young professionals looking for sharing responsibilities and cost by sharing flat while enjoying some personal space.
• People want compatible and friendly flatmates and roommates.
• Young professionals are cost conscious.

Interview

We conducted 11 interviews, some of them face to face and some of them online to understand user needs, pain points and get a better understanding of user experience. Here is the questions we asked in interviews:

Intro: Age group, work, occupation and city

1. How often do you relocate? What could be the reasons?
2. What kind of accommodation do you look for? Are there more people involved?
3. How did you find your current accommodation? How long did it take?
4. What kind of options did you explore to look for accommodation?
5. What kind of amenities/facilities do you expect in accommodation?
6. What are your preferences when staying alone vs staying with someone?
7. Any preferences based on recreational activities or hobbies ?
8. How was your experience?
9. What did you like about those options?
10. What factors do you think need an improvement from those options?
11. How much are you willing to spend on accommodation on a monthly basis?
12. What factors did you consider while choosing your accommodation?
13. What challenges did you face in finding accommodation?
14. What were your expectations before you started looking for accommodation?
15. What kind of compromises did you make?
16. What do you do if one of your flatmates is shifting somewhere else?
17. Can you describe your ideal roommate and your expectations?
18. How do you choose a roommate or flatmate?
19. What kind of accommodations did you have in the past?
20. What kind of accommodation will you prefer when going back after COVID? Why?
21. Any other comments or suggestions.
22. What kind of technologies are you interested in? Your preferences.

Interview Insights

Here are the insights from the interviews.

Demographics

• Most of them are working professionals
• Majority of them were between the age group of 21 to 30

Personality

• Have no issues staying with unknown person
• Prefers sophisticated applications to search accommodation or Roommate.

Motivation

• Reduction in overall cost while sharing the space
• Share responsibilities like cooking, cleaning, etc
• Effortlessly finding new roommate
• Want to have a feeling like home
• Independence of living

Goals

• Finding someone who might not be a friend but can be trusted
• Find someone with a similar lifestyle
• Prefers to have a personal space while sharing a flat
• Prefers close proximity to office & recreation (Gym etc)
• Major delivery outlets serving the location
• Find a room that has basic amenities (Hot water, power backup etc.)
• Distance should not exceed 15 km from office or college
• No visitor or time restrictions
• Designated storage space for everyone in the room
• Spacious enough for sharing with others
• Good and peaceful environment
• Freedom to cook food
• Parking space
• Apartment/Residency with some other house rented by bachelors
• Garage nearby
• A roommate who cares about hygiene and safety
• Flatmates who understand and split responsibilities well

Pain points

• Fake or no images or listing with fake details
• Very limited filter to refine the best result
• Unauthorized/Unverified users
• Hard to find people you can trust
• Friend as a roommate often breaks the friendship
• Different life habits
• Denied accommodation for bachelors
• Costlier accommodation
• Far from the city
• Incompatible and not responsible flatmates
• Not so good properties listed
• Bad furniture quality
• Renovation needed
• No information about electricity or plumbing issues that need to be fixed before moving (First-time maintenance cost)
• No information about water leakage in monsoon
• Hygiene issues
• Forced to find a replacement when relocated
• Restriction on visitors/delivery outlets

Part 2: Product Artifacts

Based on our user research we identified different user groups and created two personas.

Persona 1 : User is looking for a roommate

Persona 2 : User is looking for a personal room or apartment

User Journey Map

We created user journey maps for both the personas mentioned above.

This case study was done as a part of an assignment and in collaboration with Shrikant, Abishek and Bhashitha.

I would love to hear your thoughts and suggestions in the comments :-)