Leaving the Nest…
As college students, the process of renting is daunting. Nest is a rental app that centralizes, organizes, and shares all forms of information. To get rid of all the lost texts, unorganized photos/videos, and long text-heavy spreadsheets.
Nest’s users can create a dedicated group that gives access to members to organize all their potential rental listings from websites and even manually input unlisted properties. Once all the information is inputted, a user can click on any saved rental listing which they can then write a review, give a rating, and even upload their photos/videos. Our app then ranks the listing based on feedback from other housemates through a combination of AI and personalization.
With college students often having multiple housemates and being first-time renters, Nest wants to provide a hub of resources to easily decide on the perfect home.
- Our research period during the time of our project timeline was extensive as we went on to complete our comparative analysis, conducted user surveys, user interviews, and as well as finding the perfect branding guide for our app. Through our comparative analysis, we were able to find the advantages and disadvantages of some of the most highly used apps when students search for housing. It was clear that these apps offered only a couple of features that were needed by students in order to find a perfect match for their new home.
Our surveys showed that almost half of the surveyors answered that they utilized Excel/Google Sheets to organize their potential homes. Another very common obstacle that was mentioned in our survey was how some of the “estimates” that were shown within the app were not accurate and the only real way to find more information about a specific housing option was going to the location in person. Zillow and Apartments.com both lack the most important feature that is mostly wanted by students which is being able to organize and read peer views about a housing option. However, some key features that these apps including AirBnB had that we believed were core features to the app was the ability to filter out user’s options depending on their preference.
After conducting user interviews, it became even clearer that the lack of an organization tool within the app hindered the user experience with these certain apps causing them to stray away and look for different tools to help students with their findings. One interviewee said, “Peer-to-peer is more valuable than looking on a website” while another said, “Not enough websites that give you a good enough breakdown of each apartment’s features”.
Questions we asked for user interviews: Describe your current housing situation Please walk us through your typical step-by-step process when searching for a place to live Did you tour this current apartment? What do you look for when searching for a new place? What obstacles do you typically encounter in the house/apartment hunting process? Rank the following features of importance on a scale of 1-5 (1=not helpful; 5 very helpful) a feature that allows you to share housing information with your housemates of potential prospective apartments? a quiz/filter to input your housing preferences a feature that keeps track of potential apartment/home options
https://forms.gle/3eiWUBCg7cyTxcMk9
- Through our research findings, we were able to highlight major issues that influenced the direction of our design. One of our major design decisions was developing a mobile app as opposed to a web application. In our comparative analysis, it was evident that many of the applications were much easier to use as web applications than in their mobile counterparts. Moreover, in our survey responses and interviews, students pointed out the difficulty of organizing prospective homes/apartments based on the inconvenience of using a laptop to access web applications. This prompted us to create an app that would facilitate the overall process for students seeking a place that best suits their needs by incorporating like-features of a web application without overcomplicating usability.
Another major issue students reported was communicating their notes among their housemates. In one response to the obstacles encountered in the house/apartment hunting process, one survey respondent noted, “Tour scheduling conflicts with housemates & keeping track of all the apartments toured”. In our app, we implemented features that allow users to create groups to share prospective homes/apartments with housemates along with any notes. This function remedies the communication and tracking issues that many face by consolidating these features into one mobile space.
Additionally, some survey respondents reported obstacles to the homes/apartment hunting process which related to affordability and cost comparisons. This led us to implement an AI feature we named “Nessie’s Recs” in the form of a chat function to allow users freedom to explore a range of inquiries whether it be for price comparisons, information on nearby neighborhoods, and more.
Built With
- figjam
- figma
Log in or sign up for Devpost to join the conversation.