Background
House hunting is notoriously stressful—over half of homebuyers report feeling overwhelmed, with many brought to tears during the process. Rising housing costs, such as the average U.S. rent reaching $2,031 per month, coupled with poor agent communication and market competition, only add to the challenge. Renters face additional hurdles, including limited housing options that meet both budget and location preferences, with 50-60% feeling stressed about finding a home in their desired neighborhood. Younger generations, like Gen Z and Millennials, are especially affected, often experiencing heightened emotional distress.
This project aims to explore ways to make the home-hunting process less taxing and more efficient. By analyzing and redesigning features of popular real estate platforms like Zillow, Realtor.com, and Apartments.com, potential solutions are proposed to improve the user experience for renters and homebuyers.
The scope focuses exclusively on the home-hunting journey, excluding sellers and listers due to their distinct needs, workflows, and goals. This targeted approach centers on understanding and addressing the challenges faced by renters and homebuyers in today’s competitive housing market.
Research Goals & Methodology
The research aimed to uncover user pain points with real estate apps, focusing on issues like location, cost, policies, and amenities, to improve usability and efficiency.
Using data analysis, online research, and user testing, key challenges were identified and explored through interviews. Nine participants (ages 21-24, primarily from San Diego) were interviewed via Zoom, including five renters and four buyers. Questions focused on their experiences, priorities, and behaviors during the housing search.
Conducting interviews online reflected the natural home-search context, enabling the collection of verbal and visual data to understand user needs, goals, and frustrations.
Renters frequently encounter outdated and incomplete listings on Zillow, often missing details like utility fees, which forces them to rely on external sources or direct contact with sellers. Comparing multiple listings is challenging due to the absence of a Compare feature for rentals, and inefficient location filters make it difficult to find homes based on proximity or commute preferences.
Homebuyers struggle to evaluate neighborhoods as Zillow’s Street View feature is hard to find and time-consuming to navigate. Additionally, they need better tools to compare listing prices with market trends and recent sales.
Both renters and buyers want filters for points of interest like grocery stores and schools, clear agent details to assess credibility, and cost breakdowns for expenses beyond the listing price. Many users also find Zillow’s “Saved Homes” and “Save Search” features confusing or difficult to use, expressing a need for intuitive tools to save search criteria, track price changes, and receive tailored recommendations.
Problem
To better understand the problem and explore potential solutions, fictional personas were created to identify user needs and pain points.
Personas
Initial Sketches
The design process began with low-fidelity digital sketches, allowing for quick idea generation and team discussions to prioritize key features for redesign. The previously identified pain points guided the selection of features to focus on, including Save Homes, Save Filters, and Points of Interest (POI).
After a design critique session, it was decided that combining both sketch options for each feature would be the best approach. The lo-fi wireframes were then used for user testing.
Lo-Fi Wireframes
To evaluate the effectiveness of the redesigned features, we conducted user testing with four participants—three renters and one homebuyer—who matched our target demographic. Participants used both the Zillow app and the redesigned prototype, completing three tasks related to key features. They were asked to verbalize their thought process, answer follow-up questions, and provide feedback on the experience.
Final Design
The final design addresses key pain points identified during user research, focusing on enhancing usability and efficiency for housing searches. Features like Save Homes, Save Filters, and Nearby Points of Interest (POI) were redesigned to improve organization, provide clearer navigation, and streamline the decision-making process. User feedback from testing was incorporated to refine the design, ensuring it meets the needs of both renters and homebuyers while delivering a more intuitive and stress-free experience.
The Commute feature streamlines the process of finding homes near key locations by allowing users to filter listings based on travel time and other factors. It simplifies commuting considerations and ensures users can quickly identify properties that meet their location preferences.
Selecting Commute Location & Filtered Map Based on Commute Location
PoI Toggles & PoI Tags on Home Card
The redesigned POI interface enables users to view and toggle multiple types of nearby amenities—such as grocery stores, schools, and hospitals—directly within the app. This feature enhances decision-making by providing comprehensive location context at a glance.
Save Homes now includes features like tagged save, folders for better organization, and notifications for updates on saved listings. These enhancements help users stay organized and informed throughout their housing search.
Saved Home Overlay & Saved Homes Tab
Saving Filters Screen & Saved Filters Tab
Save Filters provides accessible presets and the ability to create multiple custom filters, saving users time and effort. Improvements include clearer navigation and better integration with notifications to keep users updated on new and relevant listings.
Explore the Playable Prototype
Explore the redesigned features through interactive prototypes. Experience improvements like streamlined Commute filtering, a more intuitive POI interface, enhanced Save Homes functionality, and efficient Save Filters.