Real estate platform for Non-Resident Indians
THE CHALLENGE
Lack of transparency and cumbersome process
NRIs face many hurdles when investing in Indian real estate. The process is mostly offline, requiring them to be physically present, which is tough due to time zones and distance. There's also a lack of clarity around land purchases, property registration, and pricing, especially in smaller towns where unofficial cash deals are common, making prices unclear.
My Role
Platform : Desktop | Company : Shark Realty | Duration: April - June 2024
My responsibilities included user research, product strategy, aligning stakeholders on product goals, information architecture, designing user flows, visual design, branding, prototyping and user testing.
Business Goals
To be a trusted brand for real estate
To gain Non resident Indians (NRI's) as clients
Make the website to be a source of information
THE DISCOVERY
What are Non Resident Indians saying?
Before beginning the website design, I conducted qualitative interviews with Non-Resident Indians (NRIs) to gain insights into the challenges they encounter when purchasing property in India and to understand their specific needs for investing in Indian real estate.
"I might not have invested in properties if we did not have a trusted person"
Key takeaways
People want to trust the website
Transparency of property price/history
People want to know whole process
What makes a brand trustworthy
I tried being in the shoes of a user and explored why certain brands, even outside of real estate, earned consumer trust and carried out a heuristic analysis of the websites.
Aesthetic and minimalist design
Market value of past 5 years
Complete price history with year of sale
Zillow shows the complete price history and market value of a property
Delivery details
Comparison of similar products
Products reviews
Fast delivery made Amazon a trustworthy brand
Defining the problem
How can we make Non Resident Indian's (NRI's) trust and easily buy real estate in India?
KICKING OFF THE DESIGN
Sketching ideas
After figuring out the problem statement I started ideating the initial sketches. I tried the crazy 8's to quickly sketch out solutions into designs.
Behind the scene
Filter gives users to search properties according to neighborhood, builder ratings etc and details like price, area is shown giving information to users to trust the website
Details of property features with images shown and keeps the information transparent and requesting a tour of the property makes the website trustworthy
Price history change over the few years and tax history of a property keeps any information hidden
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A details of the company what services they provide gives users a knowledge of the whole process and a live customer support helps users clarify queries gaining trust
Is it transparent?
Next I conducted usability testing with the 6 target users to test whether the designs aligned with the 3 user needs. I tested the user flow of viewing a property. I gave the users the following tasks:
1. Search for 'popular' properties in a particular neighborhood.
2. Look at the details of the property such as images, price, characteristics.
3. Book a date for viewing the property on a particular date and time.
Usability testing
Juggling between stakeholders and users
After gathering the feedback on the initial design with the users I sat down with the stakeholder on the opinion about the design and user feedback.
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Stakeholder had an opinion that in real estate you cannot be transparent about every details of a property.
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They do not have enough people to gather every record of a property
"Trick of trade is not showing every price details."
After a lot of convincing I managed to convince the stakeholder to show increase in percentage of prices in a property to make them standout from the competitors in the market and be transparent. Based on the feedback from user and stakeholder I tried to keep a balance and iterated the designs for the first MVP.
Filters to sort properties by price, area, localities, categories added
Accessibility of the property is shown from airports, railway station, etc.
Price trend of a property over the past 5 years shown with an interactive map
Specific location of a property listing with map
Final design
