Year: 2023
Role: Product Designer
Background: Rently is a fintech startup that enables end-to-end support for the property rental process, from property listing and tenant acquisition, to contract negotiation, signing and managing tenancy support requests.
It offers Asia Pacific's first deposit-free service that grants tenants the convenience of skipping the downsides of hefty deposits while safeguarding them from potential rental scams or landlord/tenant disputes. Through the integration of national digital IDs like SingPass, Rently is able to ensure convenient and secure rental transactions for both tenants and landlords.
Context: The first project that I took on was revamping the Marketplace for both app and website with the goal of improving the tenants' and landlords' user experience. Rently’s initial marketplace was built before the design system was in place and several of the design choices were made by developers instead of a designer.
My first step when tackling this project was to conduct a heuristic evaluation for both the app and website and identify the flaws and points for potential improvement. Below are a few problems that I’ve identified with the app at the start:
The marketplace web follows a similar structure to the app's.
Another observation is that the elements in the property listing detail page has a shadow but the property listing card in the marketplace doesn't; hence making it look inconsistent.
After discussing with the developers and stakeholders, it was decided that the marketplace needed a quick redesign to increase usability for the time being, rather than a complete overhaul. Thus, I avoided making too drastic of a change to these screens as it would have been too time consuming to implement at the time. It was also decided that the marketplace was also lacking a filter and map feature - which is something that is deemed essential for a rental property product as users would often search for properties based on their desired residential area.
The biggest issue was the property listing card on the app. While it was designed initially to show the users as many properties as possible without the need to scroll excessively, users had difficulty in seeing what the property looked like as the photo was very small. Information (Address, amenities, sqft, rental cost, type of property) was also very cluttered due to the size of the listing card.
Property listing page: The property type pills were taken out and placed below the photos for better visibility. Photo area was expanded to take up the whole width to make it look more dynamic. A landlord/agent contact card was designed with a profile pic option so that it adds genuinity to the listing.
Filter: The filter was based off the conditions that users will look out for in a rental property (Information provided by Sales team). A 'Sort by' and 'Clear' button was also added so that users can further categorise their search results (Some may not care where the property is it has the best price)
With the additional information added into the property listing page (when the tenant can move in & description of property), the current user flow for when the landlord/agent uploads a property onto the Marketplace needed to reflect that as well.
On the landlord/agent's end when using the app/website, there's an additional 'Listing published/unpublished' toggle added for their convenience.
Map feature
What I would have done differently: Working in a startup environment, the focus is often placed on constantly shipping out features quickly, and the value of research and user testing tends to be overlooked. If I had more time and resources to work on this project, I would definitely conduct usability testing with real users to validate my design decisions, and iterate upon my designs based on the feedback.