[Music] today the prompt is we want to design an app to help people find roommates yeah so let's get started sure um so before i dive into the design i would like to get some context about this whiteboard challenge um so can you tell me about more context about maybe like who are we as a company first yeah that is a very good question um let's say we are a company that wants to make a profit um we want to design these kind of apps because you know nowadays especially during the pandemic a lot of people are finding a very difficult time to look for roommates okay sounds good so that is one context oh can you tell me about the constraint uh is it like an mvp or do we already have a design existing uh and what is a platform is it just like completely mobile app we're also website as well that is also a very good question so let's say um for the constraints we are targeting an mvp because um in the past we do not have such apps we are a brand new startup and we want to launch this mvp maybe within um like four months or so so that's why we want to just like build up something that's really basic and launch it out as soon as possible yeah okay sounds good and can you tell me about who are the user maybe their demographic or just any information about the users yeah that's a very good question uh we have very high level understanding of the users but in order to learn more about the details of the users we might need your support to help us understand we want to target maybe students who are in a university to find the right roommates yeah okay so i would say their age range might be like you know like 18 to 24 i'll say yeah okay that sounds good and then when it comes to the location-wise is it fair to say that they're in uh north america yeah that's totally fair we want to start with north american students and then if the business goes well we might expand it to the global scale okay sounds good um so i would like to know that um what's the current solution here like if the users or these students if they don't our app what what's their go to solution for finding a roommate currently that is a great question so according to our current market analysis we learned that usually students today maybe just like post some questions on a facebook group chat to see if they can find the best match for roommates and also they might look up just for some like roommate matching website on the internet from the market analysis we also learned that they tend to ask their friends to see who are other friends that might be like looking for roommates because you know usually friend of friend might sound more reliable comparing with just looking for people who they don't know at all so these are a few different ways current students will look for new roommates but there can be like other ways they look for roommates too okay so to sum up the current solution is post questions in facebook group or roommate matching websites and asking friends in their network because it's more reliable correct exactly okay so now that i have the overall context here uh maybe i will create a user persona for designing this whiteboard challenge here um so when i think about the uh looking for roommates i think there's a two types of roommate here so one is i already have a room and i just i'm looking for roommate to move into my place and the other one is i'm looking for a roommate i don't have a place i would like to move in together for a new place in the future or i'm looking for someone who already has a place so i can move in right yep absolutely that's great okay that sounds great so um perisona so i would say first persona is maybe um james he's a 20 years old um uh he has a place okay maybe um he's current roommate is moving out so he's looking for someone to replace his current uh roommate how does it sound yeah sounds great and then the other person that might be uh i'll say eric and he's 21 years old university student okay so okay and eric doesn't have a uh place please uh looking for a roommate uh to move in together or someone who already has a available [Music] room [Music] how does a persona sound does it um sound like our targeted user yeah i think that sounds great to me and also i would love to learn more about how do you identify the major persona when you are approaching this problem oh since you mentioned that our uh targeted user is student uh in university and finding a roommate right so i think uh and as as i said before uh there's a two main user case one is already having a room the other one isn't having a no room so i think those two are definitely uh sounds like our targeted users in this case yeah awesome so problem statement over here um and then this time maybe talking about the user pain point so i think uh in this pandemic more like covet situation uh usually finding a roommate usually done by online uh but i think the main pain point that i can think of is the reliability or credibility it's like you never met the person so it is hard to find some reliable sources right definitely credibility um is there any pain points that can that you want to you know point out other than credit to me um yeah so credibility is definitely one of the most important user pinpoints um because like i mentioned earlier according to our market analysis um they want to find people who they might know um compare with people who they don't know at all um people who they're familiar with might be better choices but there can be other user pain points as well yeah in this case is there other pain points that you think might be important to the target group i think those two are like good good you know like incredibility and then uh familiar really someone who they might know or someone like their friends and friends something like that [Music] yeah okay sounds good so now uh i would like to ideate here so all right um i just want to like add another potential user pain points to the list so some other pain points might involve for example you're not quite sure whether or not the other person has the living style that might match with your current living style because you know sharing the same space really requires a lot of for example mutual interest or common living styles so that might be another user pain point out there um yeah okay that sounds really good yeah i definitely agreed that like having a common lifestyle would be really important um because you guys are living together right yeah and also maybe like in terms of um the price of the rent um different people might have different perspectives so for example when looking for roommates we might want to look for people who have similar mindset of how they're going to split the rent something like that okay like grocery bills or utilities yeah okay sounds good credibility familiarity and not sure if other person's lifestyle may still match their lifestyle um like common lifestyle okay okay that sounds good okay sounds good uh and now i would like to talk about uh [Music] key feature here so first key feature that i can think of [Music] so in this case um for eric's case he's looking for someone who already has a room or moving together right so maybe uh in eric's perspective he would like to see what is the current available room listing so available listing and then for james perspective he already has a room so he wants to see uh who is looking for a roommate so maybe like um roommates listing like profile listing how does it sound does it sound okay yeah sounds good yeah and then the other thing is when it comes one of the our pain point is credibility right so maybe verify user so what verify user is basically we as a company uh kind of like uh check this person's id or some of their you know those like credibility check and then we give them like a check mark you know those like you know verify user in instagram something like that so uh it gives other users that oh this person is trustable or trustworthy yeah so that is one key feature um the other thing is maybe like easy chat because like once you find someone who is interested you quickly wanna you know have a conversation real quick right and then if this person is really like met your lifestyle or whatnot by having a conversation so i think this easy chat would be like you know those like facebook messengers or whatsapp those like really simple uh that everyone use in a daily basis yeah so those are the key features that i can think of right now does this sounds good to you uh yeah sounds good to me is there other features that you might want to add to the list let me see it's a pain point here yeah it's totally fine if you think these are the top two features we want to include for this mvp yeah okay so i can think of one more feature here so user uh prefers someone in their network or uh they prefer someone their friends friends even though they don't know the persons because it gives them more like trustworthy and you know credibility at least right you know as opposed to completing complete strangers so maybe uh we have like um [Music] i don't know how to call it but like you know friends friends maybe you can uh synchronize with your facebook and then if this person is your friend's facebook friend's friends it show you that oh this person has you know same mutual friend cool right that's awesome yeah i think that one's good feature um let me see lifestyle yeah and then uh definitely uh the lifestyle wise but maybe like introduction uh aka bio and then it includes like lifestyle hobby or like it could be like smoking or like you know drink or all those like personal lifestyle so they can quickly kind of like a benchmark oh this person has the same lifestyle as me or not yeah yeah so those are the keys right here yeah so now i'm going to talk about uh the key user flow for first time users may i ask why you want to focus on uh first time user in this case just talk a little bit more about the version now yeah yeah first of all like we're basically creating a complete like brand new app right so i think and when it comes to like new app that people are not familiar with the onboarding the very first time you use onboarding is very uh crucial so i think that's why we should focus on the first time user onboarding process in this case awesome makes total sense to me [Music] okay so first of all they have to open the app [Music] and then the first thing i have to open is sign up sign up and uh when signing up they're going to create the profile and then the profile is as we covered before james and eric's case right so when you create profile we ask prom that uh what kind of um roommate are you looking for so uh if you have a room [Music] maybe like the prom might be like i already already have an the other is um i'm looking for a roommate [Music] together [Music] or it could be uh i think these two are saying maybe like i'm [Music] looking for our room it's like these two case would be uh fall under eric's case here right yeah so uh when creating profile there's a to prom here uh so if in this case uh if already have a room then after they have to post uh unit cost room yeah post room [Music] and uh oh sorry uh before that they have to uh provide the personal information [Music] and this personal information will be contact uh maybe picture i'm not sure it should be mandatory or optional i'll call it optional for now because someone might not be comfortable sharing their picture on the internet uh and then bio aka intro and in that intro they can just quickly you know introduce themselves just like customize text and then after that they are going to pause the room and then in that room uh maybe like you need detail and in that detail it could be like a price uh like how many rooms uh maybe like amenities [Music] as in like does it happen in unit laundry does it have elevator does it have a gyms etcetera [Music] make sense yeah and then after posting it what they will expect is uh someone send them the message right so like a notification in this case message from other user and then our conversation [Music] and then maybe it's a one feature like cool feature to have is that once they you know enjoy the conversation and then if they uh maybe like uh give me a second let me think [Music] maybe like orange meetup feature yep yeah so they can uh orange meet up feature so once they orange meet up uh it'll give them like send them maybe google calendar invites so they don't forget about it yeah and then they'll be done [Music] yeah and then the other one is uh this case uh he would like to see um king oh well hold on yeah so it's sorry it should be the same personal information okay yeah and then in this case they don't post room um through uh room listings or roommate listing [Music] and then send message star conversation orange oh sir orange meetup and done so yeah i think these are uh two main uh feature i mean the two key user flow for the first time user onboarding how does it sound is there anything that i miss or you want to add on um yeah so i might want to ask some clark clarifying questions here so i see that um there are two really clear user flows and the second flow is like the user can just like find a roommate to move in together by searching through a list so i want to learn more about whether this list is like location based or it's like pricing based or like what what exactly is the list you have in mind yeah so that's really good question so uh i think uh when they create a person i mean create the profile at first maybe they choose the locations um maybe with their their preference preferred location so in that case they don't have to filter whatever the location after uh creating the profile right we will only show the listing that is in their preferred locations in that case and then also yeah when it comes to the room listing or roommate listing um maybe on the very top there's a filter there so you can filter by price or how many rooms or amenities all those like you know little filter i see i see totally cool yeah okay this sounds great okay so now we kind of settle down on the um user flow i would like to make a wireframe on your frames okay so i'm not like familiar with uh oh that's totally fine you can just like grab whatever um frames that's already there yeah yeah i'm going to grab it over here okay so first uh user case maybe like room listing first when it comes to the bottom tab this is because this is going to be the native m right there is going to be a bottom tip here so i can think that uh maybe i would like it more bigger [Music] okay so in this case there's a bottom tip here and then in the bottom tab um i guess uh rooms oh okay rooms and roommates and my profile [Music] and also messages [Music] oh i don't have enough space that's fine that's totally fine yeah so there's going to be a fourth tip here rooms roommates messages and my profile so we're going to start with the rooms here um so when they are on when users are on this room screen we're going to see the picture here pictures of the of the room maybe and then here uh mentioned how much is it because that is most important uh information here right so is this the search page like the listing view of all the rooms yeah like current room that is uh yeah yeah yeah yeah cool yeah and then here maybe like one bed uh bad one bath something like that and then maybe underneath we have like maybe like area i don't know like maybe i'm just gonna say toronto here could i learn more about your design ration now of why you want to arrange all this information in this way i think um when it comes to like the listing here the information should be the most higher level information that is that matters to me you know not like detail like you know like does it have a gym that's not like my main uh interest uh with i mean i've been i have i look for a roommate before or i look for a room before to move in so when when i when i was doing that i think the main key uh factor is it price like it's no-brainer yeah no matter how good it is you know if the budget is not within my budget there's no way i i'm i'm going to be interested in this listing right definitely yep yes so definitely uh the pricing will be really important and then also uh i don't know how to call this but like how many room how many pass that's also like really important uh information here is it because this oh okay sorry just want to ask one quick question so is it because this is related to user's concern around privacy so for example in user research maybe you guys have learned that um like people care a lot about whether or not they would have enough privacy by checking out how many rooms in total will be available in one house so that's why the team decides to showcase the situation okay yeah yeah yeah and on the bottom maybe like uh area um i'm not sure if that's that matters but maybe like we're in toronto i don't know uh uh i forgot where it should be a good i don't know what something like that maybe like area so in the case you can kind of picture that oh this this room is around that area right yep yeah so uh these are going to be the same as in the bottom yeah and then once user click this they're going to go on to the detail of this room so it's going to be a bigger picture here and then maybe uh like indicator how many pictures yeah carousel something like that and then same info here and then uh price but there is going to be a more detailed picture here in this case here maybe like um it would like customize a bio like and then on the bottom maybe like how many tees such as like uh does it have a gym in unit uh laundry uh etcetera and then maybe on the bottom maybe household mm-hmm because everyone has a different lifestyle right definitely yep yeah so it could be like no smoking uh no pets or uh no drugs something like that yeah and then if users are interested in uh they can quickly you know uh send them a message here you like here there's a button [Music] oh it's gone sorry yeah something like that oh no worries yeah yeah so if they click this message button they can you know quickly start conversations so on okay and the next thing uh another main key feature is roommates listing it's pretty much the similar uh but it's sorely the picture i'll say so here there's a picture of this person maybe like name uh maybe lifestyle bio all those things give me a second name and then i think the budget is really important information here budget link range maybe lifestyle will be in the detail page so i will say name budget and bio like you know quick summary by you're here and if i'm interested this person i click the pictures or something like that and then it'll go it'll bring me to the detail page of this person and then basically the same thing yeah basically same thing as a room listing so it's gonna be a bigger pictures and they're showing the you know oh i have a quick question so yeah so um on the roommate listing is it like a similar listing view but this time the focus is roommate versus the other one which is like room listing um the focus will be rooms so basically there's like two tabs on your app one tab is focusing on room and the other one is focusing on roommates okay exactly yeah exactly so i guess like this roommate oh we're almost on time uh is it yeah is it followed by okay is it is it okay to move on yeah that's totally okay okay sorry about that so yeah basically this roommate would be kind of like i can think of like kind of like a tinder-ish kind of thing so user can just like either scroll down or you know swipe left or right you know if they don't like this don't like it just swipe lab if they like it swipe right and then it'll bring them to the detail page which is this screen and then they can see the detailed information about this person and then they can also message right away [Music] yeah so in this case here bio lifestyle [Music]