LIGHTHOUSE
Lighting your way to a new real estate investment
Lighthouse is a responsive web app that provides property buyers with information on properties of interest. LightHouse's goal is to help users navigate in a new market by providing information and people of contact to make the best real estate investment that fits their goals and budget.
Role: UI designer
Type: Responsive web app
Timeline: Oct-Dec 2021
-01-
Discover
What's important for real estate investors?
Real estate investment is an increasingly popular way for individuals to achieve financial security. It is an exciting and emotional experience but often complicated. While there are plenty of blogs and agencies providing information, often, buyers new to the market may struggle to get started without professional guidance and waste time viewing properties out of their range.
Design thinking
The problem
Making a real estate investment is not an emotional decision, it's all about the numbers. Small-scale real estate investors, new to the field, need to find properties that suit their specific goals, learn about the new location, and find the right agent to accompany them through the process.
The solution
- Allow users to find properties according to their specific budget, risk level, and holding duration.
- Provide easy access to relevant real estate agents that are specializing in small-scale investors.
- Provide relevant information to make smart decisions about real estate investments.
The goals
Designing an app that will help small-scale real estate investors find properties that suit their budget and risk level, provide relevant information for the area and property, and connect to relevant agents in the desired location.
Required feature
- Search and filter available properties according to the investor's specific needs.
- Access comprehensive information about a given property and its neighborhood
- Bookmark a property listing and compare properties.
- find real estate agents that specify in small-scale real estate investors.
-02-
Define
Persona
Meet Angela, a busy IT consultant looking for her first real estate investment
User Flow
Lighthouse's goal is to help users find real estate properties specific to their needs and budget and contact real estate agents in the desired investment location.
-03-
Ideate
Low & Mid fidelity prototype
Mood Board
Lighthouse users are mostly mid to high-class working class that has some savings they want to invest in real estate. To provide the best experience for my users the design language should be clean and clear, the colors should reflect stability and security, but also differ from other similar apps to create a new brand dedicated to real estate investments.
-04-
Design
Style guides
Property search
The property search is based on the user budget and investment requirement. Results are presented as a list or on the map, similar to other real estate apps for familiarity.
Why invest here?
This option allows users to review relevant information for real estate investment in the desired location.
Find an agent
While some users know when or why they want to invest, for some users it is hard to know where to start. Finding an agent according to the location will allow them to review relevant agents in the desired area.
Save and compare properties
Choosing a real estate investment is a financial decision. By comparing the different saved properties users can make an informed decision before contacting the agent.
Sound: Tutorial 2 by Frank Schröter Link: https://filmmusic.io/song/8965-tutorial-2 License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
Prototype
-05-
Reflection
What have I learned?
When I was working on the Lighthouse web app I mainly focused on the UI design. While it is important to design nice mockups I notice that during the design I had to go back and research more to provide a design that is not only appealing but also answers the user's needs when buying a property for investment. To achieve that I conducted a few informal users interviews and added new features like "Find an agent in this area" and "why to invest?" to provide users that are new to real estate investments tools to learn about the area for their investment.
What's next?
Conducting usability tests is my way as a designer to evaluate my design. The goal is to test the design on a few potential users that will help me keep iterating the design and providing a better user experience.
