Korda Group Hillside Apartments
A simple design at the touch of your fingers
Overview
Summary:
To create an app that provides the same services as a tenant portal for an apartment complex and its residents. Giving users access to information, reminders, and contact information that’s easily accessible to all.
Roles and Responsibilities:
Sole UX/UI Designer on the project
Independent project- research, develop, test, and iterate an App
Audience:
All tenants living in the Hillside Apartments
Age range from [20 - 70]
30 responses to survey
Problems:
Rent payments are coming in after the first, late fees are skyrocketing, people don’t have access to a laptop 24/7, and tenants feel they are the last to know about building updates or maintenance.
The Process
Information Architecture
Conducted research using surveys and completed a SWOT analysis using an app that is similar to the one developing in this project. After this, we created user stories, user personas, and user interviews to further develop the app and get a better understanding of what users wanted.
Competitive Analysis
Strengths:
clear information
easy to navigate
exact copy of laptop portal, just condensed
Weaknesses:
no clear UI theme
online portal (laptop)
exact copy of laptop portal, just condensed
Threats:
has more features than our mobile app does
more widely used across different audiences (laptop version)
Oppertunity:
moving to a mobile app
clean up the UI
keeping the UI cleaner cut and simple
Fairbanks Property Rentals tenant app
User Surveys
Almost half of the users admit they pay rent after the first, for whatever reasons stop them, this results in late fees that just add on to the mountainous bill that rent already is.
Only one-third of users know when their building sends out alerts. This consists of water outages, maintenance work, or amenities being closed.
Though most users have 24/7 access to a lap top, there is still a large chunk of people that don’t have that access, therefore, getting cut off from all things regarding their building and living situations.
Key Takeaways:
A majority of users are falling short of paying rent on time which is increasing late fees and causing buildings to go without on-time payments.
Some users don’t know what is going on with their building regarding maintenance, or amenity closings which can cause confusion and frustration among tenants.
About 20% of tenants don’t have access to a laptop 24/7 which can delay payments or submissions for maintenance work that tenants need to continue comfortable living
User Personas
User Stories
“As a tenant of the Korda group apartments, I want to be reminded when rent is due to keep my payments on time.”
“As a tenant for the Korda group apartments, I want to be able to use my phone to communicate with my building, as my phone is my most accessible device.”
User Interviews
User 1 : Mckkayla Jordan (f/23) User 2 : Kirk Jesser (m/60)
What would you say accounts to your tardiness with rent payments?
User 1 : “I work so much I can’t remember what day of the the week it is half of the time, I don’t even remember what months end in 30 or 31. The first of the month ends up coming and going so fast. I can never keep track.”
User 2 : “I don’t stay full time at my apartment in Hollywood, I only stay there a few months out of the year when I’m in LA. Sometimes, I just forget its the first when I’m working or out of town.”
What devices do you find yourself using the most in the day?
User 1 : “My phone, pretty much everyone does.”
User 2 : “My phone I guess, but I carry my laptop around with me almost as often.”
Key Takeaways:
People who are out of town often for any reason have a harder time remembering to pay rent as they are away from a responsibility most people look at as just “home”
People that get caught up in work, school, and personal matters aren’t focused on what day of the month it is and without a reminder of such, the first of the month can easily slip someone’s mind.
In today’s world regardless of age, many people have their phones at their fingertips, not their laptops. This poses an issue as most building handle rent payments via laptop/computer.
Creation Stage
Here we will dive into the user flow, site map, wireframes, and style guides.
User Flow and Sitemap
Key Takeaway:
For the user flow and sitemap, it has a simple guide that focuses on the four main subjects of “Payments, Maintenance, Account, and Contact” These are the “four horsemen” of a tenant portal and it is kept synonymous with an online portal for easy adaptation for the users.
Stylizing
Key Takeaways:
The brand personality had to be kept within the scope as we were working with a company that is already developed. We were limited in color concepts so we kept the original deep navy blue and white so it can stay adjacent to the preexisting website. The app has a clean and strong front to keep it easy to navigate for all tenants young and old, using several icons to go along with its corresponding text to keep the users in the loop of exactly what each button function is. The app is bold and most importantly reliable, just as all things should be when regarding your home.
Sketching and Wireframes
Sketches
Wireframes
Iterations through User Testing
Through A/B testing I used a collection of users to view the four smaller ovals that show different versions of the logo. Not sure which fell in line best with the compani’s site and morale I took to users to select the logo that would be presented within the app. The bottom right logo ended up taking the cake.
The second main iteration to take place was the most essential. The idea came up to create push notifications for the app. Though the app is easily accessible by phones, you still run into the same issue of it being lost among other apps on your phone, here we created the option for notifications regarding rent day, building alerts, maintenance notifications, and email notifications to be turned on to show on your lock screen if allowed. This puts the alerts directly in the user’s face making them less likely to be forgotten or overlooked.
A suggestion while user testing also came up regarding the submission of rent payments or maintenance requests. The “beginning screen” shows before you submit your payment. The “version 1” screen was the original change that showed you submitted your payment. After user testing, it was suggested to make it a separate screen, so it’s easier to distinguish when you’ve finished, and we incorporated a fun “congrats” message to make it more of an experience for the user. We ended with the “final version” screen.
Some more basic changes that took place after user testing consisted of:
alignment issues
color matching
button corrections
"save" feature to log in
Notification "slider"
Final Cuts
Dive in by clicking this button below
User testing is the best tool at our disposal. Seeing the project from different points of view and learning how to create it within the scope.
Bold and simple is most often the way to go, especially when creating something that isn’t targeted at any specific demographic.
There are ways to be creative while still having several restrictions on stylizing. Instead of thinking it limits creativity, use it to figure out just how far you can push the envelope while still delivering what the client wants.
My confidence in building out apps has grown. This was a great exercise for me to work with a client and learn how to put my own style onto something that already had previous criteria I couldn’t stray out of, so I was able to put much more focus onto the building out.