Project Information

DESCRIPTION

Proma is a property management solution that can enhance your strata living experience by providing quick and easy access to amenity bookings or online payments within the taps of your fingers.

MY ROLE

UX Research, Wireframing, UX Design, Prototyping, Usability Testing, Branding, UI Design

TOOLS

Adobe XD, Sketch, InVision, After Effects, Photoshop, InDesign

TIMELINE

8 Weeks

PLATFORM

iOS and Responsive Web

Problem Space

WHAT IS STRATA?

A strata development is a building or land that is subdivided into parts called strata lots for individual ownerships with a proportionate share of the common property.

Common types of strata housing can include buildings such as condos, townhouses, and duplexes. 

WHY IS STRATA SO POPULAR?

Currently, over 1.5 million people in BC are living in strata housing. Strata properties are a popular choice of housing in B.C. for:

• Convenience & Security

• Added Amenities

• Good Real Estate Value

It looks after day-to-day maintenance and management, including cleaning, landscaping, and building insurance, so you don’t have to.

STRATA LIVING & STRATA COMMUNITY MANAGEMENT

However, living in strata is not always as easy as what it sounds like. Living in a strata building can be more difficult or unpleasant than one’s expectation due to many reasons such as:

• Complicated Bylaws & Rules

• A slow process of communication between strata management and strata owners

• Following up with important notices and news

• Living with neighbours who are unaware of the bylaws & rules

KEY RESEARCH INSIGHT

According to PropertyApps,

9/10 residents preferred online amenity reservations rather than manually booking through the concierge or over the telephone.

There were up to 16 hours per each month saved from property management on managing and accepting amenity booking requests and communicating with residents. 

HOW MIGHT WE

improve communication between strata management and strata owners in order to optimize efficiency and create positive strata living experience?

User Interview & Findings

PROJECT ASSUMPTIONS

To start, I created a project assumption based on my research. 

I believe my customers have a need to: Reach out to management office quickly and easily, and submit their request online (for example, amenity bookings and bylaw violation report).

These needs can be solved with/by:  providing an online booking platform, online payment.

My initial users are (or will be): Strata owners and residents.

I will acquire the majority of my users through: Strata management company

The #1 value a person/user wants to get from my product/service is: Online booking feature, convenient request submission

RESEARCH INTERVIEW PLAN

As a next step, I decided to conduct a User Interview to test my initial assumptions and deeply understand the pain-points and the needs of strata owners & residents.

Goals & Objectives: To find out the interviewee’s thoughts, experiences, feelings, and struggles towards Strata living. To know their current satisfaction level towards communication with Strata management.

Methods: 1 on 1 person interview & Video Call

Tools: Note-taking & Otter app 

Participant Criteria: Anyone who has lived in the Strata building for more than 2 years in Vancouver, BC. 

Participant Preference: Owner > Tenant / Resident

FINDINGS FROM INTERVIEWS

After my user interviews, I’ve categorized my discovery into people’s Behaviours, Pain-Points, and Motivations.

THEME & INSIGHT STATEMENTS

Then, I decided to narrow down my findings into 2 themes.

Primary Theme: Bookings & Fee Payments

Insights: I recently moved into my new condo. Scheduling and booking for furniture delivery are not easy because it is hard to speak to my Strata Agent during my work time. I wish to have an online booking system so that I can book for my delivery even at night times.

Secondary Theme: Community Awareness

Insights: There are important building maintenance or urgent notices sent to residents; however, sometimes I am unaware of these because I don’t check my emails very often. I wish to get a notification or text message through my phone so that I am aware of the important things happening in my building.

USER PERSONA

With the data gathered from research and user interviews, I created a primary persona Jeremy who is somewhat new to strata living and a secondary persona Alex Miller who has lived in Strata for more than 10 years. Both persona’s pain-points, behaviours and goals were created considering the user interview findings as well as the primary and secondary theme & insights. 

Primary & Secondary Persona

CURRENT EXPERIENCE MAP OF PRIMARY PERSONA

After creating the primary and secondary persona, I decided to look further into my primary persona’s current experience and journey when booking for the strata amenity.

Goal: To book for furniture delivery.

EPIC AND USER STORIES

Considering the frustrations and feelings that were discovered in the current strata amenity booking process, I came up with my primary persona’s user stories, in other words, the wishlist for easy and convenient amenity booking.

TASK FLOW - ELEVATOR BOOKING

Then, I imagined how the future amenity booking experience would be like for my primary persona when using Proma. Because I wanted my app to be simple and convenient as possible, I made the online booking process to be completed within a few steps. So people like Jeremy who is fairly new to strata living and finding the process of contacting strata management to be slow and frustrating can relieve his frustrations.

Design & Iteration

INITIAL IDEATION & SKETCHES

USABILITY TESTINGS

Number of Testers: Total of 10 Users

• 5 Users per each round of testing.

• Total of 2 rounds of usability testing.

Purpose of the test:

• To get real-time feedback from the developing prototype.

• To test the usability of my product.

• See if users can complete the given tasks.

• Find out any areas of confusion if there is any.

ITERATION AND IMPROVEMENTS ON CALENDAR VIEW

For Version 1 of my prototype, the dots on the monthly calendar view was confusing for some testers because it was only communicating pieces of information. In other words, there was no way for you to know whether only a few hours of that day were booked or the entire day was fully booked.

And what was even more problematic was that you could only book for the default of 4 hours and there was no way to modify this.

On Version 2, I decided to add a filter function, so that the users can filter through available dates instead of having to click back and forth between the dates. However, because the FAB was located on the bottom, many did not notice this at all. Some did not even realize that this was a filter button.

For selecting the number of hours, I decided to add a slider that could be dragged down to time frames. However, this conflicted with the page scroll. 

On Version 3, the filter FAB has been moved to the top and I enlarged the size of my calendar so that I could fit small labels hinting towards how many bookings have been made for each day.

For adding time, I created a modal that can edit the number of hours booked. But people preferred to be able to click and modify directly on the time frame itself.

On Version 4, I changed the filter icon to filter chips that are separated by categories and also decided to show the filtered results in green.

For adding time, I managed to find a way to directly tap on the time frame itself and be able to modify the number of hours needed.

For the final prototype, I decided to do more iterations on the UI design so that the information is laid out with a little bit more breathing room and a better hierarchy.

FINAL PROTOTYPE

Branding

VISUAL IDENTITY

ALTERNATIVE PLATFORM

RESPONSIVE MARKETING WEBSITE

Conclusion

KEY LEARNINGS

• Test early and test often.

• Define and focus on 1 or 2 themes.

• Think about how to maximize the use of your viewport size.

DESIGN IMPACT

Who or what disappears if your product is successful?

If PROMA becomes a successful product, the strata property management company will save money and time dramatically.

On the other hand, this could mean technology replacing a human workload. Strata property management companies might hire fewer strata agents and administrative assistants due to less workload.

FUTURE DEVELOPMENT

• Looking into different target audiences such as property managers, caretakers, or strata council.

• Considering different access levels and security.

• Account ledger and 3rd party software integration.

RESOURCES

https://www.condomanual.ca/blog-articles-tips/strata-101-strata-concept/

https://www.streetsidebc.com/2020/01/why-youll-love-strata-living/

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/e/2PACX-1vSlDUHrr7ukYk2pE07iZUZEY8ctvhpbTgWMZb0pUu9uHbRM5GL7pcJ-X2AMZ0RNpmL1Y2Su0ELNG7EM/pub?start=false&loop=false&delayms=3000&slide=id.g207a0e7e8e_0_0