Victoria McKenzie
I hope you're having a lovely day!
TWO BY TWO
TIMELINE
4 months
ROLE
Team Lead, Presenter
PROJECT TYPE
University Group Service Design Project
Overview
THE PROBLEM
Moving to a new place, with new people, is hard. It's difficult to meet people similar to you looking for housing, and can be stressful to find accommodation with tight timelines or budgets.
OUR SOLUTION
An on-campus housing service to match university students as roommates, and support them on their hunt for a home. Running in-person social events, online communities, an interactive app with chatbot features, and offering support through the application process are just a few of the ways TwoByTwo was designed to help students with housing.
The Brief
As a service design project we were given the topic of 'Housing' with no other details or limitations. We decided to narrow our scope to university housing, as we personally could empathise strongly, and were passionate to solve relevant issues - as well as having many target customers as friends for fast testing.
Understanding our Problem Space
To determine exactly what problem we were trying to solve, we decided to complete both desk research and interviews. We scoured online forums, social media, and other digital content; as well as interviewing 25 friends, classmates and work friends who study at Melbourne University.
Desk Research
We utilised discussion sites such as Reddit and Quora to gage public point points, as well as looking at rent listings, understanding accommodation options and their current expenses/restrictions.
There was also a big focus on accessibility throughout this process, and entire project.
Interviews
Q1: What service ideas would you consider using?
Q2: What are some struggles you have while looking for accommodation?
Q3: What is your current living situation?
RESEARCH FINDINGS
Through our desktop walkthrough, interviews as well as 3 pre-provided personas given for this task, we categorised our findings into the following 4 key painpoints:
1.
Findings Similar Roommates
Students found it hard to meet potential roommates with the same interests, schedules, values and accommodation preferences as them.
2.
Navigating a foreign environment
It can be really scary to make decisions and navigate a new place, especially if you are new to Melbourne, have accessibility needs or don't fluently speak English.
3.
Understanding accommodations
Finding house options is really confusing and overwhelming. The market is expensive and competitive and has lots of tricks you don't know when starting out.
4.
Missing community and feeling alone
A community where you feel supported and social is rare in a post-COVID university landscape. Often students feel lonely and isolated.
Ideation
HOW MIGHT WES?
How Might We improve the experience of students looking for accommodation options in an unfamiliar environment?
How Might We foster a sense of community allowing students to meet great future roommates?
How Might We make the housing application process more seamless, accessible and approachable for university students?
RAPID IDEATION
To solve the questions we had, we ideated 10 solutions using Crazy 8s, SCAMPER, Worst Possible Idea, and Mind Mapping. Two of the 10, that we didn't end up pursuing, are explained below:
Uber-style Moving Service
An Uber-style moving service where students can receive help of untrained individuals with strength and large cars. Opportunity to make money, as well as cut costs on professional movers.
Personality Matching
An online community with a personality quiz to profile certain traits including passions, values, personality type and schedule to match with other potential roommates.
DESKTOP WALKTHROUGH
We combined a couple aspects of different ideas we came up with, to incorporate both in-person and digital avenues to both meet a roommate, and look at housing options. This includes guides tours and roommate events. To understand how this service and its touchpoints would work in practise, we ran an end-to-end desktop walkthrough of a users experience.
Social Events
University student club would run events in partnership with TwoByTwo's service, with different themes to meet potential roommates.
Accommodation Expo
The university would host a Housing fair - similar to a Career fair, for different housing options such as UniAccom, sharehouses or rentals.
Guided House Inspections
TwoByTwo would support students on their first time inspecting a house, as it is sometimes difficult to know what to do and the right questions to ask.
Final Service Design
We created an end-to-end service design for university students to meet other students, connect profiles online, go to group outings for house inspections, and be supported in the application process.
FINAL STORYBOARD
THE APP
As a fully designed service, we needed digital touchpoints too. The app would be used to connect students profiles, stay in touch, learn about the in-person events, as well as get support through the application process. Though its only one piece of the service, it's incredibly important.
CUSTOMER JOURNEY MAP
We created a future-state customer journey map, highlighting the different physical and digital touch-points a user would experience using our service.
Chatbot
Part of our task was to incorporate an AI chatbot within the service design. Just like our service as a whole, our chatbot was intended to support two main functions: finding a roommate, and finding accommodation.
TECHNICAL WALKTHROUGH
Our chatbot was prototyped using Voiceflow. It uses AI to interpret users' natural language input, and responds in a friendly, helpful way - even when dealing with errors.
CONVERSATIONAL EXPERIENCE (CUX) PRINCIPLES
Clear, Simple & Friendly
The chatbot has an approachable persona, Noah (named after Noah's ark for pairing and housing). The language Noah uses is simple and easy to understand for all.
Personalised & Context Aware
The chatbot remembers key details about suburb preferences, and tailors suggestions based on users input about their preferences.
Accessible
The chatbot asks for specific accessibility needs and uses this for future suggestions, adding to the user's profile. For more support, the chatbot can redirect to live help too.
Reflections
CHALLENGES
TwoByTwo strived to solve students housing issues by creating an end-to-end service solution. Though there is an immense need for the services outlined, I think we might have bit off more than we could chew for this specific assignment. In retrospect, I believe a clearer problem statement - focussing on either roommates or accommodation individually would have led to a clearer end solution. Both are worthy issues to face, but the clarity of the final service can suffer if it is spread too thin.
MY LEARNINGS
I really loved this subject and enjoyed designing for something beyond just a digital product. It was a valuable task to consider all the different touchpoints a user would go through interacting with an organisation, beyond just the app screens. I also appreciated the emphasis this subject and project had on accessibility, an enormously important requirement through the entire design process of any new product or service.
