Why homi
India has one of the world's largest millennial & gen-z populations, between 22 and 38 years 72% of them, live in leased housing. As more youngsters move for work or studies, the demand and cost of housing options like PGs hostels and apartments keeps going up, coliving is thus becoming a need rather than a choice
They either look for someone who already has a spare room they can move in to
Or they have a spare room and are looking for a flatmate who can come and move in with them
Problem Statement
Finding a good place to live is hard but finding the right person to share it with is even harder. While there are multiple property/home rental platforms in the market, there is a significant gap in the market for a solution that helps people find a compatible roommate or a co-living situation that fits to their needs.
How might we make it easier for youngsters living away from home find a compatible roommate or a co living situation that fits to their needs.
Introducing Homii App
Homii helps people find the right roommate, whether they’re looking for a room to move into or have a space and need someone to share it with. It connects room seekers and roommates based on similar lifestyles
Final features
Users can easily browse available room and roommate listings at any locations, and filter results based on their preferences such as location, gender, age, rent, lifestyle habits, or room type etc.
Post your room requirements or list your space
Users can easily post what they're looking for whether it's a room or a roommate through a simple guided form and let the right match discover them
Personalized Onboarding for Customized Suggestions
During onboarding, users are asked to fill in basic details like name, age, gender, and profession followed by a quick lifestyle quiz with questions around hygiene, noise tolerance, and smoking or alcohol preferences. It helps create a more transparent profile and customizes experience for them while they are looking for a roommate.
Personalized suggestions
Based on details shared by users during onboarding, app suggests people with similar background ( similar workplace/college etc.) and similar lifestyle, mutual people on social handles etc. to create a sense of familiarity and ease that stranger danger feeling a little
Detailed roommate profiles
Profiles include everything from basic details and lifestyle preferences to optional social media links of a potential roommates, so users can get a better sense of who they might be living with.
In app chat feature and chat prompts
In app feature allows user to get in touch with their potential roommates and get to know them without having to share their personal contact information in case things don't workout
Chat prompts are present for people who hesitate in initiating conversations with strangers
RESEARCH
Understanding user needs, expectations, and struggles while finding a roommate or shared space
Research Objective
To identify and evaluate existing solutions
Identify the target audience and their key demographics
To understand user needs and preferences while looking for a roommate or room to rent
To explore pain points and challenges faced by users while looking for a roommate
Competetive analysis
I started by identifying existing platforms people use to find rooms and roommates. I selected 3 competitors and explored their features read user reviews and looked at community posts to learn what is working and what's frustrating the users.
Facebook groups (flats and flatmates)
Flatmate.in
Spare room
Key insights from competitive analysis
Lack of trust and safety
Across all platforms, users expressed concerns about misguided posts, and risk of scams and apps are full of brokers that charge hefty amount
Missing key Information and scattered and unstructured listings
Posts are unstructured, outdated, or missing key details about users and property. There’s no easy way to filter or search, which makes finding a good match time consuming and difficult.
High dependency on paid features
In current solutions most of basic features like viewing description, contacting owner etc. are hidden behind paywalls which users feel are not worth it and causes drop offs
Surveys and user interviews
To gain first hand experience from users i sent out surveys and conducted interviews with 12 people all between 18 to 35 years old, to gather quantitative and qualitative data about their experience while looking for a co-living situation, their needs expectations and preferences, and their positive and negative experiences while living with a roommate.
Key insights from User surveys
Existing solutions
89% found their room or roommates through friends and family
8% found their room or roommates through brokers
only 3% found their room or roommates through Facebook and other platforms
Key pain points
Time consuming process
Limited discovery options
Mismatch in lifestyle
Trust and safety concerns
Decision making factors while looking for a place
Rental cost
Security deposit
Proximity to their workplace/college
Are main factors that affect the choice of accomodation
Some qualitative insights derived from users interviews that guided the design
1
Lack of roommate finding platforms makes the whole search process confusing and time consuming
Users are more concerned about the people they are going to live with rather than the place of stay. The reason for the same was because it is easier to find a place to stay as there are various platforms available (e.g., housing, MagicBricks, nobrokers, etc.), but it is hard to find a roommate to stay with who is compatible
2
Most people are skeptical about living with a stranger and finding people online
Most people prefer living with someone they already know like a friend or a friend of a friend because they find it hard to trust strangers online. This hesitation usually comes from fear of scams or ending up in a bad living situation.
3
Many users care about common lifestyle of roommates (different tolerance level) to avoid conflicts
Most users said they look for roommates with similar lifestyle habits like hygiene, noise levels, guest rules, and substance use to avoid conflict. While some were flexible, many had strong preferences, and most past issues came from mismatches in these areas.
Who are we designing for
To design better solutions, I first needed to understand the people I was designing for, I grouped users into two main types based on their roles in the roommate search process.
1
People who have a room to share
For people who already have a space and are looking for a roommate.
2
People who need a place to stay
For people who are searching for a room in a shared apartment.
Conclusion
Youngsters need a reliable platform that helps them find both a compatible roommate and a suitable place with ease. they want a safer, faster, more transparent, and simpler way to connect with like-minded people.
I framed some HMW questions to help shape the design decisions.
1
How might we make the room and roommate search process easy and less time consuming
2
How might we address users hesitation of finding roommate online and living with stranger
3
How might we help users find a compatible roommate who align with their lifestyle and preferences?
Building a simple, trustworthy space that helps users feel more confident finding the right roommate.
User flows
After deciding on the final features, I mapped out the user flow with first-time users in mind. The goal was to make the experience feel familiar and approachable.
Style guide
I quickly sketched out wireframes to plan and structure and flow of key screens along with that i created a simple and friendly style guide to ensure consistency across my designs.
Improving the Experience Through User Feedback and Iteration
User testing and iterations
I put the app through 2 round of feedback and iteration with the users to make sure it is easy to use and not missing any information. each round helped shape the feature and flows based on what users actually needed and struggled with.
1
How should we communicate the rent of a place more clearly?
Before*
"Is this price for the whole place or just my share? "
Many users were confused whether the listed price was the full rent or just their share, creating doubt about hidden costs and how rent was split among roommates.
Added a clear label "Your Share" above the rent amount, Added a "See rent breakdown" button to let users view the full cost details if they want
After*
2
How roommate listing got evolved
Before*
"When i first saw the profile picture then name and gender i thought it was a dating app . then budget was the other thing that confused me big time . it took me a while to figure out that it is a roommate listing"
The oversized profile picture was too dominating on the screen and took attention away from other important details that users care about while looking for a roommate, like room type, lifestyle habits, and preferences etc.
After*
Went back to research board had to rethink about users needs and had to to reorganize information hierarchy by shifting attention to what helps users decide
Reduced size of profile picture to lessen the visual dominance
de-emphasized budget as it is just a range that is covered through filters , it helped in shifting attention to other things that actually helps user decide like their property preference, lifestyle habits and location etc.
3
How should we reduce drop offs and encourage users to complete the lifestyle quiz
User testing showed that most users skipped the lifestyle quiz as the onboarding felt too long to them. the onboarding flow has two steps personal information and lifestyle quiz. Originally, both parts were broken into multiple screens (4–5 each). While users completed the required personal info, they often skipped the lifestyle quiz, saying the onboarding felt “too long”
User flow of onboarding before testing
Personal details Section before testing
Personal details Section after testing
What i changed
Merged the basic personal info (name, age, profession etc.) into a single screen instead of 3–4 separate ones. to make onboarding feel faster and reduce early fatigue
Personal info gets auto-filled when users sign up with Facebook or LinkedIn, so they don’t have to type it again.
Added subtle nudges on the homepage for users who skipped the lifestyle quiz to encourage completion later.
My learnings & future of homii
A design is never complete and there's always room for improvement however at this point i I feel I’ve somewhat achieved what I aimed for that is to simplify the roommate finding experience. i made some mistakes took feedback of multiple designers who helped me with a fresh perspective One idea I’d love to explore further is a team-up feature where two or more user can form a group and find a vacant flat together
This project won’t stop here, I plan to keep iterating it as I uncover more problems and opportunities.