Resooma

Design an MVP for a new rental app specifically focused on houses of multiple occupancies. Understanding the student housing market and the pain points of students looking for shared accommodation was vital to this project. Resooma wanted the team to come up with a feature that would differentiate them within the market.

Project Summery

Students need a transparent, all-in-one platform to view and compare HMOs as well as organise their bills so that they can: Not get caught out making first-time renter mistakes / Focus on enjoying their time at uni. In order to make sure the team was aligned and move forward, a problem statement workshop was called. By breaking down common issues into USERS (Need a way) PROBLEM/NEED (so that) OUTCOME.

Research

After gathering user stories that ranged from being charged for leaving a sock under the bed to a shower falling through the ceiling, the next step forward was ideating a concept feature that could solve our problem statement while also differentiating Resooma from the market.

Users were asked a series of 3 questions, what are your initial thoughts? Would you see yourself using this feature? How would you rank this feature on a scale of 1 - 10 in terms of its usefulness to you?

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Not what I expected

An area guide, video walkthroughs, and a tailored search were the top 3 most useful features. By this account, a feature that should solve both the problem statement and differentiating feature would be an area guide, but this raises two questions.

1. Who is the area guide for if students generally learn about cities through word of mouth?

2. If not the area guide then what?

Making sense of the area guide

The area guide was popular among international students. International students would often sign a contract without ever seeing a property in person, having a guide with information about their chosen area would allow them to make more educated choices. Domestic students also felt the guide would be useful to have as a back pocket item to get more localised information about an area. It was also noted that first-year students know where they want to live for the second year, but when second-year students move into the third year, their needs become more specific. For instance, quieter areas and bigger living space.

A feature the entire team agreed on but lead to problems was the inclusion of a landlord profile. It was a way for Resooma to alleviate the lack of transparency within the student housing market. Our research so far had been mainly tenant-based, trying to balance this with what landlords were willing to reveal, lead to a few roadblocks. A few ideas for this feature included, property fault history, number of properties held and previous tenant reviews which later to became an endorsement system.

An outlier feature

The Outcome

We set the way for Resooma, we designed an MVP that aims to makes the student housing market more transparent, tailored and supportive. Resooma now has a product that sets them apart in the housing market. To take the app further, Resooma would need to do further usability testing and balance the product for landlords and letting agents.

Looking back

We set the way for Resooma, we designed an MVP that aims to makes the student housing market more transparent, tailored and supportive. Resooma now has a product that sets them apart in the housing market. To take the app further, Resooma would need to do further usability testing and balance the product for landlords and letting agents.

"Mark delivered some great designs that echoed the needs of our customers and gave us an exciting future product roadmap".
- Daniel Jeffreys, Founder, CEO, Resooma