Locality
Overview:
MY ROLE:
TOOLS USED:
User Interviews, Competitive Analysis, & Data collection.
Persona, Empathy Map, & User Flow.
Interaction Design, Responsive Wireframes, Prototype, & Usability Testing.
HTML5, CSS, Bootstrap, JS, & jQuery, Express, AJAX, Handlebars, Mongo DB, Google Maps & Yelp API.
We interviewed a collection of 30 people that have been in Denver area for less than a year. We asked what would be important to them in a neighborhood. Our findings were safety, schools, walkability, attractions, public transportation, services, & parks.
There is not an app that specifically pairs you with what neighborhood is most preferential to you. Our research showed Facebook groups such as; New to Denver Meetup, Denver Housing, and Denver Collective Housing were a popular way to get a feel for each neighborhood & meet potential roommates.
Denver, CO is experiencing a growth rate of around 2% each year since 2015. With newcomers entering the city people are curious what neighborhood would best fit their lifestyles.
The following persona was created based on the evidence gathered from the user research. Erika Watson represented primary users which were millennials moving to Denver and looking for neighborhoods that would best fit their lifestyle. The empathy map reflects her feelings and how her environment could influence her decisions.
I had multiple different ideas for how users would find their neighborhood. A drag and drop feature that lets users drag each preference from most preferable to least preferable turned out to be the cleanest design and easiest to use among the others tested. I also brainstormed ideas of a short quiz or polling feature to help their neighborhood search.
Similar to the research I had 8 people sit down for a usability test session. I had four people looking to move to Denver and 4 people looking for a new neighborhood.
There is a lot to be said for what was accomplished in 2 weeks. However, we are really excited to continue working on this app. Further implementations and testing will be done to improve the app.
Improvements: Finding a faster compression for the sorting algorithm. Next to the the map will be a text list of top 5 neighborhoods and statistics on them.
Expansion: The next step of the app would be expansion out of Denver into other metro-cities, and eventually nationwide. Also, the expansion into a mobile application.
