Redesign listing experience for new departing tenants

Redesign listing experience for new departing tenants

Background

Doorkee is a prop-tech company based in New York City that aims to streamline the rental process for landlords and tenants. Their platform connects departing tenants with prospective renters, incentivizing current tenants to showcase their units. This facilitates a seamless transition for landlords to fill vacancies quickly.

Registering their apartment on Doorkee is a crucial first step for tenants planning to move out. This process directly impacts one of Doorkee's key performance indicators - the number of live units listed.

The problem

We discovered that 71 % of users attempting to list their apartments were abandoning the registration process prematurely. Our customer support team received numerous inquiries, with users citing confusion and difficulty navigating the original flow.

The goals

Recognizing the need for improvement, our team asked: "How might we make the registration process more intuitive and engaging?"

Fresh off leading Doorkee's rebranding efforts, where I introduced a vibrant new visual identity, I saw an opportunity to enhance the registration experience. We set three key goals:

1. Identify drop-off points and reduce user abandonment

2. Improve overall usability and user experience

3. Align the new experience with our updated branding

With targets of improving listing completion rates to 35% and reducing support inquiries by 10%, I took the lead on overhauling the UX/UI from concept to delivery.

Role and team

I spearheaded the end-to-end process of research, UX, UI, and creative direction - from early ideas to final designs. This included collaborating with an illustrator to develop custom visuals and ensuring consistent messaging with the marketing team.

My core team consisted of 1 product manager, 1 technical lead, 2 engineers, 1 illustrator, and the marketing team.

Discovery

Reviewing existing data

My discovery phase began with reviewing our product feedback library and analytics data.

Additionally, I conducted a UX audit to identify detailed issues and identify opportunities for improvement, focusing on form components like structure, input fields, assistance, and validation.

Strategy & alignment

To cultivate a shared vision and deepen our understanding, I socialized my findings with stakeholders through:

Proto-journey: We mapped the full journey of a departing tenant to better understand their experience and align assumptions.

Scenario mapping: Through collaborative exercises, we explored two core scenarios - buildings already in Doorkee's system versus new additions. This illuminated user pain points and guided our design decisions.

Key learnings

Synthesizing our discoveries, four major issue categories emerged:

Unnecessary friction:

• Users had to create accounts before checking building eligibility

• Premature requests for detailed apartment information and landlord information

• Non-essential questions like square footage or pet policy increased abandonment

Poor form usability:

• One overwhelming page accounted for over a third of drop-offs

• Lack of mobile responsiveness and ability to save progress

• Inability to select preferred tour times/dates

Lack of guidance:

• Instructions were provided out of context, increasing users’ cognitive load

• Low-quality user-generated content like photos

Content-related problems:

• Vague field labels like "tips to future tenants" and industry jargon like “property” or “database”

• Missed opportunities to set expectations and highlight benefits

Armed with these insights, I set out to craft an intuitive, user-friendly registration experience aligned with Doorkee's new branding.

Design exploration

Driving considerations for design

Based on what we’ve learned from the discovery phase, our design priorities were:

• Streamline the task flow to be user- rather than data-centric

• Break the long form into digestible steps

• Allow saving progress and returning later

• Provide better guidance and clarity

• Enable setting tour availability times

The business also required adding a "Rent Refund Agreement" step.

Optimizing the user flow

I rethought the entire flow, exploring how the flow could be better with the team. This helped align on business needs and technical constraints.

Ideation

Key changes emerged across three areas:

Remove: Eliminated 6 redundant fields that could be omitted, derived elsewhere, or collected later, like security deposits.

For buildings not in our database, I deprioritized upfront unit details, instead focusing on landlord information. This reduced the form length significantly.

Reorganize: I regrouped fields into logical sections from the user's perspective:

1. "The basics" - auto-populated core details like rent, beds, baths

2. "Your apartment, your insights" - fields requiring user input like photos/descriptions

3. "Tour prep" - new section for tour availability and agreements

Rephrase: Rewrote microcopy to be clear, friendly, and motivating:

• Set expectations around benefits, processes, requirements

• Used conversational language and encouraging tips

• Added examples and illustrations for guidance

Other enhancements included progress celebrations and a save mechanism to boost completion confidence.

The revised experience aimed to provide a more intuitive, rewarding journey aligned with Doorkee's vibrant new identity.

User Testing

Study design

To evaluate the new registration experience, I conducted moderated usability testing with 7 participants fitting key criteria like recently moving or planning to move soon in NYC. The focused research questions included:

1. What information do users need upfront before starting registration?

2. How well does the new design align with their expectations?

3. Which aspects are easy or difficult? Where are the main pain points?

4. How can we better guide first-time users through the process?

5. What are users' reactions to the peer-to-peer rental concept?

I handled all aspects of the study myself - planning, recruiting, and moderating the 60-minute sessions involving freeform exploration and task scenarios.

Key takeaways

After synthesizing findings, I presented findings and recommendations to the wider team. Main insights included:

Overall appeal and experience

• The peer-to-peer model was novel yet intriguing to most

• Many were motivated to create a compelling listing

• Participants appreciated the step-by-step approach and tips (though discoverability was an issue)

• The modern, clean designs garnered positive feedback

Clarity and comprehension gaps

• Lack of clarity around financial details like payment amounts, logistics

• Uncertainty around Doorkee's landlord partnership model

• Concerns over time/effort required and inability to get upfront earning estimates

Trust and credibility hurdles

• Inconsistencies around the refund agreement led to frustration and feeling misled

• Some skepticism persisted around the "too good to be true" premise

• The quirky tone missed the mark for some users

Reframing the problem

Through user testing, we uncovered nuanced insights around building trust, ensuring transparency, aligning with user motivations, and providing clarity. This led us to reframe the core opportunity:

"How might we create a clear and confidence-inspiring listing experience for departing tenants while establishing brand credibility?"

Design principles

I derived three key design principles to inform the final solution:

Design for first impressions

For many new users, this is their first exposure to our peer-to-peer rental model. We can't ask for too much upfront before establishing trust and setting proper expectations through visuals, content, and an appropriate tone.

Prioritize engendering trust

Being accurate and transparent instills confidence. Unpredictable inconsistencies undermine trust. We must align messaging with what users ultimately experience to avoid discomfort or feeling misled.

Emphasize pragmatic communication Users need complete information to make informed decisions. Omitting crucial details like what our "landlord partnership" means raises more questions than answers. Clear, straightforward language trumps cleverness.

Final solution

With these learnings, I optimized the registration flow through multiple iterations alongside design reviews. Moving from medium to high-fidelity, we defined the ideal interactions and visual designs.

Key enhancements

Building trust & setting expectations

• Provided upfront education around eligibility and potential earnings to establish transparency

• Improved clarity on Doorkee's landlord partnership model, rent refund process, and tenant responsibilities

• Used a warm yet straightforward, authoritative voice to inspire confidence

Prioritizing usefulness and clarity

• Redesigned the "Rent Refund Agreement" section with clear, scannable information and provided layman’s terms

• Increased discoverability of helpful tips and incorporated real-world examples for guidance on crafting quality listing content

• For buildings not in our system, prioritized landlord referrals over premature unit details

Results and impacts

The revamped experience struck the right balance - reducing upfront friction while providing critical guidance through a user-friendly, trustworthy interface aligned with Doorkee's approachable brand voice.

Since launching the redesign, we've seen:

• Listing completion rates soar from 22.6% to 38%, exceeding our 35% target

• Support inquiries related to listings reduced by nearly 50%

• Extremely positive user feedback on the intuitive, informative journey

By deeply understanding user needs and addressing underlying issues around clarity, trust, and motivation, we transformed a high-abandonment flow into a catalyst for Doorkee's core service growth.

Learnings

The biggest challenge and opportunity was developing a new experience that could alter the way users think about things, or introduce them to a completely new model. We introduced a new way to tour apartments and give tours which is both exciting and daunting. It is important that the new design is done correctly, to minimize the risk of adoption and usability.

As designers, we communicate not only through interactions or visual graphics but also through our content. The complexity or novelty of a concept amplifies the difficulty of achieving clarity, making transparency and coherence paramount. When it comes to data collection, prioritizing user trust is non-negotiable. Consistency in messaging is also crucial, as it helps to establish and reinforce customer trust.