Roommatch
MY ROLE
[Solo] — UX Research, UI Design, Prototyping
SOFTWARE & TOOLS
Figma
TIMELINE
November 2022 - December 2022 (2.5 Weeks)
How might we make improve the experience of finding a college roommate?
This project was an assignment for one of my classes. The prompt stated to identify a problem within a social network and create a feasible solution through the UI/UX Design process. An issue that many college students might deal with is finding an ideal roommate. Currently, many students resort to Facebook groups and social media to find a year-long roommate, however, these methods are often disorganized and unreliable. On the other hand, using roommate randomizing systems, designed by universities may not always be ideal. With Roommatch, I wanted to focus on the HMW question… How might we create a centralized location for college students of all years to find their best-fitted roommates?
Research and Inspiration
When formulating this concept, I was inspired by the way people at my school currently find roommates. Often, students would resort to Facebook groups and write out posts about themselves and what type of person they’d be when it came to rooming. I even made one myself (lol.) Some preliminary inspirations I had for Roommatch were profile designs often present in dating apps, making certain information (e.g. work, height, location, etc.) about a user clear to their prospective match. Similarly, I wanted to create a better way to highlight important roommate-related information on one’s profile for my app.
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From there, I went ahead and surveyed several students amongst different Discord servers to hear out their experiences regarding finding a roommate in college. With the time crunch, I was not able to get as many respondents as I would have liked to, but I still felt I had some important insight to gather from my survey.
(The top image) Understanding the demographics of my users. (The bottom image) Current ways users go about finding roommates and their thoughts on the overall organization
What users currently liked about their process of finding roommates
What users currently disliked about their process of finding roommates
Important Insights
When brainstorming features and goals, I wanted to keep in mind the current gain and pain points users are facing with this process. I wanted to keep the liberty of being able to choose a roommate while understanding their living habits upon meeting them.
An interesting take was social media when searching for a roommate. Although social media can provide some insight into another person’s life, it often provides only a glimpse of what a person is really like.
Moreover, with dating apps which were some of my first design inspirations, I’ve come to notice a picture is the first thing a user sees on someone’s profile. Though that might be important for finding your perfect partner, photos should not be as important of a factor when finding your perfect roommate. This led to me to think of another way a user can express who they are to other people in other formats than posting a photo to maintain authenticity throughout this experience.
Who’s Using it?
John is a transfer student with the goal of finding a roommate that would have similar living habits as him. He also wants to befriend his roommate. Sarah is a senior who is looking for someone to sublet her room in her college house. She is looking to find someone to take her space with and has similar living habits to her current roommates.
How are They Using It?
In this flow, I focus on two possible outcomes. A user would like to find a single roommate or join a group of roommates. I also wanted to focus on the onboarding process of this flow to show users how their information is used to find them their respective matches. For my designs, I decided to stick to making a design for the first outcome, where a user is looking to find a single roommate.
Putting it all together…
Look & Feel
I ultimately decided on these colors and fonts for my app. I was drawn to a more open and friendly look that I can create through a simple color palette and san-serif choices.
Low Fidelity
Once finalizing my user flow, I was able to create several low-fidelity wireframes to add structure to my design.
Features and Walk Through
Create your profile
A place for you to input your own information and your living habits along with images you might want to showcase on your profile.
Customize your character
To promote and maintain authenticity, Roommatch has a character feature that allows users to express themselves through a character. This will be the first thing another user sees about your profile.
Your Roommate Preferences + Dealbreakers
Based on your own living habits you filled out when creating your profile, Roommatch creates an auto-filled form of who we’d figure you would pair well with. You can edit these preferences at any time or set dealbreakers, which ensures your search queries abide by those dealbreakers.
Filter and Swipe
After Roommatch generates a list of people you’d pair well with, you have the ability to filter your search. Moreover, when clicking on a profile, you can see other users’ preferences and you can swipe to view another profile. Unlike most dating apps, Roommatch still offers the ability to swipe back on a previous person.
Chat and Match
If you find a promising roommate, you have the option to message them directly while viewing their profile. Once you strike up a conversation with them and mutually consent to rooming together, you can hit the handshake icon to indicate you’ve matched.
Takeaways
Working on this project was quite an experience. Initially, I was a little worried to nail down an entire app within a span of two and a half weeks. The period felt similar to working in an agile sprint, but it was definitely much more difficult taking on the whole project solo. However, with a few compromises along the way, I was able to come up with a reasonable solution to solve this problem. If I were to continue to further the design of this product, I would love to identify what happens after two users match. This project allowed me to understand the importance of establishing a scope from the very beginning — thus making it easier for me to identify MVPs from the start so I can avoid scrapping ideas last minute due to the sake of time. Ultimately, working on this project was enjoyable because I felt that I could solve a problem that I have personally dealt with in college and it is rewarding to see how I can solve this problem for others.