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OIYKOS

Overview

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A home is a person's most valuable asset.

Real estate is a valuable element of the economy due to its role played in wealth creation. The "Proptech” market, which develops technology in the property industry is set to boom as there is always a need to adapt to customer needs by increasing transparency and providing more ease of use.

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The Challenge

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Our client is an early stage real estate startup and believes currently there are no tools in the market that allow homebuyers and sellers to collaborate with each other in an effective manner.

Oiykos aims to empower homeowners and buyers by offering a social platform that will enable them to connect with each other directly, and ultimately sell and buy property without an agent involved, saving thousands of dollars in commission.

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They approached us to conduct research on the different groups of users design an end to end and frame the user journey and create conceptual designs.

Team

Gabriel
Carrie
Sneha

tools

roles

timeline

Sketch
Photoshop
Keynote
User research
User journey
Personas
Empathy mapping
Ideation & Prototyping
Value proposition canvas
Usability testing
Three weeks

Double Diamond Process

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We started our human-centred design by following the Double Diamond approach of Discover, Define, Develop and Deliver through all stages of the project.

Competitor and comparator Analysis

 We started the research by analysing the real estate landscape where the scope of our product would fit after assessing the present market players and its scenario.

We realised that Oiykos needs to tap into the category where the attributes of traditional real estate players, the community section overlap along with the rapidly growing Peer to Peer market. That would be the appropriate fit for such a product.The community attribute plays a significant role for a social network platform like Oiykos where you can nurture an emotional connection among users.

Role of Agent 

The Agent plays an important role in the real estate market. Their hands on knowledge and sales tactics are an advantage but trust and high fees can also be a drawback. 

User Research

We have interviewed 32 users consisting of 14 Buyers, 8 Neighbours, 7 Sellers and 4 Agents to gain insights into their pains and gains.

 

We centred the questions on :

  • how they sell or buy properties

  • their required criteria

  • overall experience with agents and the process

how well they know their community.

Interviews

I conducted the research for 13 Buyers, 2 Sellers, 4 Neighbours and 2 Agents.

Affinity Mapping

We found some common patterns during 'Affinity mapping' and arranged into groups of

  • How users search for property 

  • Why they buy

  • Selling process

  • Importance of profile pictures

  • negatives and positives of 'agents'

  • emotions customers go through the entire process

  • Agent fees

  • How social they are in their community and how much they use social media

Empathy mapping

As our clients wanted us to focus on the user group 'Seller' , we crafted the empathy map to grasp 'Sellers' experience and gain deeper insights into their behaviour.

Personas

We built the personas for Seller, Buyer and Neighbour.

User Journey

Our Seller personas led us to creating the user journey by using the 5 E's principle where the major concerns were 'App privacy' , 'Authentication of user profiles', 'how to handle without agent', and 'transparency and trust'. We ideated on some opportunities to overcome the positive and negative emotions.

Prototyping Dashboard

 After some ideation and design studio, we took the best of all our designs and came up with the concept of a Dashboard for the seller. 

 

The motive was to put the control in the hands of the users and provide them smooth navigation while using the platform and we prioritised the features based on our research analysis.

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Focus:

  • Status bar

  • Buyer Interest

  • handling buyer offers

  • Inspections and calendar booking

  • Advertising packages

Usability Testing

We carried usability testing on 3 prospective users to further improve our design.

Some of our key findings:

  • Confusing regarding 'like' button

  • Expert advice is very helpful

  • Position of status bar

  • Specification of date on buyer interest graph

  • Hard to configure the advertising radius

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Next Steps

Research on the other user groups to understand their pains and gains and formulate their user journeys.

Test the assumptions around the concept of replacing an agent , the advertising package feasibility and restrictions and the need to create user profiles and share information on the platform.

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Overall , we were very much appreciated for our effort in such less time and our clients were very much pleased with our designs.

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