These challenges?

Students struggle with a cluttered interface, unclear listing details, and a noticeable lack of trust indicators. The outdated design (figure 1) falls short of modern expectations and fails to deliver a seamless, mobile-friendly experience.

For both local and international students, already juggling academics, part-time work, and independent living, the housing search should be simple and stress-free, not an additional source of frustration.

We created two distinct user personas to represent the platform's core users:
• students seeking a roommate (figure 4)
• students searching for off-campus housing (figure 5)

By understanding their unique goals, frustrations, and behaviours, we were able to design a more intuitive and user-centred experience tailored to their needs.

Empathy Mapping

To deepen our understanding of user needs, frustrations, and motivations, we developed empathy maps for both primary user groups.

For students seeking roommates, the emphasis was on trust and compatibility. Their main concerns included finding someone with similar living habits, avoiding unreliable matches, and ensuring a safe, respectful, and comfortable living environment (figure 6).

For students searching for off-campus housing, key concerns included unclear listings, security, and affordability. Their priority is a stress-free, trustworthy platform that offers verified information and a straightforward process, empowering them to make confident housing decisions (figure 7).

Visual Design & Brand Identity

After analyzing apps and design patterns familiar to our target audience, we noticed a strong preference for clean, minimalist aesthetics. This insight informed our own design direction (figure 9), leading us to adopt a similarly modern and intuitive visual style.

Colour Palette

To stand out from platforms like Facebook Marketplace and Zillow, while also conveying safety, warmth, and modernity, we carefully selected a distinctive colour scheme:

• Primary Colour: Instead of the conventional “trust blue,” we chose a bold yet sophisticated purple to signal both credibility and freshness.

• Secondary Colour: A warm, inviting yellow complements the purple, evoking a sense of coziness, friendliness, and familiarity for student users.

Defining the User Flow

We designed two distinct user flows to address the platform's core use cases:
• Students searching for off-campus housing (figure 10)
• Students looking for a compatible roommate (figure 11)

By tailoring the experience to these specific goals, we created a more intuitive and efficient navigation process for each user type.

Collaborative Design Approach

Since we were a group of three, we had to decide how to divide the tasks efficiently. Our solution was not to. Instead of working individually on separate tasks, we collaborated in real time to ensure a collective vision. We hopped on a call and gave ourselves one hour to individually design a low-fidelity wireframe for the homepage (figure 12). Once the time was up, we presented our concepts, analyzed each design, and selected the strongest elements that best aligned with the project's goals.

By consolidating our ideas, we crafted a single, well-rounded homepage that combined our collective insights and strengths (figure 13).

The consolidated homepage served as our reference point for developing the rest of the website's low-fidelity wireframes, ensuring consistency across both desktop and mobile versions (figure 14).