Zillow Virtual Staging
Pre-plan your future home's furniture layout, even if you can't visit it.
Timeline
Jan-Mar. 2024
Role
UI UX Designer
Year
2024
Skills
Interview/User Research /Prototype
Team Member
Monan Qian/ Sarath Chand Nekuri/ Ran An/ Muzi He
Project Overview
This project revolutionizes Zillow's user experience by introducing Virtual Staging with customizable furniture. lt allows users to tailor properties with different furniture styles, colors, and sizes, enhancing visualization and personalization. This feature positions Zillow as an innovative, technology-driven real estate exploration leader.
Goal Statement
Our goal is to enhance user engagement and satisfaction on Zillow within the next 6 months. We aim to foster seamless visualization of digital property spaces. Through this initiative, we target a 7-9% profit margin to drive platform growth.
Context
What is the problem? 🤔
Nowadays, people face significant challenges when renting or buying homes online. 82% of buyers find it easier to visualize a staged property for their buying decision. But 71% of homes are not staged.
Prototype and Iteration
Meet Our Solution 📍
Product Benefits
Saving money and time
Immersed
In control
Feature 1: Switch between doll house view to floor plan
This feature enables users to seamlessly switch between a detailed 3D dollhouse view and a traditional 2D-floor plan view of a property. The dollhouse view allows users to explore the property as if walking through it. The floor plan view offers a clear property layout, making it easier to understand each room's spatial arrangement and dimensions.
Feature 2: Measure any room and plan everything precisely
This feature provides users with precise measurements of any room in a property, aiding in better planning and decision-making. For buyers and renters, it visualizes how the furniture fits, ensuring spaces meet needs. Agents use it to give clients accurate measurements, boosting transparency. The goal is to provide essential space information universally.
Feature 3: Place furniture in your room
This feature allows users to change the colors of furniture and place them within any room in the property directly from the staging interface. Users can visually gauge the size of furniture items and assess their fit within the room. This tool enables buyers, renters, and agents to experiment with different furniture colors and arrangements to visualize and personalize their living or selling spaces effectively.
Feature 4: Fully furnish the house with just one click using AI
The AI-powered instant house staging feature automates the process with a single click, providing professionally staged images to enhance property listings swiftly and effectively. Buyers and renters benefit by visualizing furnished spaces more realistically, aiding in decision-making. Overall, the goal of this feature is to simplify and expedite the virtual staging experience, making it accessible and efficient for all users.
Feature 5: Contact a realtor and get quick help during the virtual tour.
This feature is designed to streamline communication between potential home buyers or renters and real estate agents by allowing users to contact an agent with a single click, providing a simple and direct way for users to ask questions, schedule showings, and get personalized help, ultimately enhancing the overall user experience and facilitating smarter, more efficient real estate decisions.
Who are the customers? 👥
Continuing our journey, we identified 2 distinct user groups within the program. To comprehensively understand and enhance the experiences of each group, we actively engaged with them through methods such as interviews, intercepts, and observations, all while setting a clear project goal.
Buyers and renters
Agents
Research
Secondary Research 📚
What's the current market size?
The US real estate software market size was evaluated at USD 2.8 billion in 2023, and is expected to reach USD 5.4 billion by 2030
We conducted a competitive analysis to gain insights into the strengths and weaknesses of existing products in the market, identifying areas for potential improvement. Our goal was to analyze both realtor and apartment platforms to understand what works well and where there are gaps, helping us to refine our own product and ensure it meets user needs more effectively.
Primary Research 🤓
Then we plan to conduct separate and independent research with buyers, renters, and agents. We began by interviewing two groups: buyers&renters, and agents. Initially, we were uncertain about the specific direction we wanted to pursue. These interviews provided foundational insights into the unique needs and purposes of each group. This approach enabled us to pinpoint a concept that would effectively address the distinct requirements of our customers.
Renters and Buyers 👨👩👧👦
Research Goals
Research Methods
Agents 💼
Research Goals
Research Methods
Based on our previous interviews and research, we understood the entire experience of our customers during a house-hunting visit. Based on their experience with our improvements, we created a user journey map to represent the evolution of the user experience before and after using this product.
Also conducted a product journey map outlines all the touchpoints where customers interact with Zillow, enabling a comprehensive understanding of how they move through different stages from discovery to final use.
Emotional Journey Map
Product Journey Map
Define
What do they really want? 🧐
Interview Insights 📝
After conducting interviews, we identified the aspects of the current products that customers find insufficient. Based on their feedback and the interview insights, we summarized a few key characteristics that customers truly need and organized them into tags for a clearer understanding of user requirements.
Sorting our tags
We analyzed our customers' responses to understand their underlying needs and preferences. By translating what they said into what they meant, we identified the key features they wanted in a product.
Customer Says
Ideation 💡
After that, we chose to use both Brainstorming and SCAMPER idea generation methods in order to maximize the number of innovative ideas. The team brainstormed for a time limit of 3 minutes, came up with some pretty crazy impractical ideas, and finally chose from them the solutions that could be implemented at the moment.
Based on our preliminary research, we began brainstorming and voting on final solutions.
Based on our preliminary research, we began brainstorming and voting on final solutions.
Before
After
SCAMPER
After identifying the product features, we proceeded to create the user flow, focusing on four main features. We then began sketching, with each team member responsible for one feature. Together, within a limited timeframe, we collaboratively drew low-fidelity wireframes.
Sketches
User Flow
Wireframes
Usability Test ⚒️
After describing the product features in detail, we conducted usability testing to evaluate how these features performed in real-world scenarios and to collect user feedback. Our general process was to set up usability test goals and action prompts.
The usability test results clearly demonstrated that users found the virtual staging features intuitive and smooth, aligning well with our expectations. The ease of use and seamless functionality resonated positively with participants, highlighting the success of our design. However, despite this positive feedback, the tests also revealed several areas for potential improvement. Identifying and addressing these opportunities will help us refine the features further and enhance the overall user experience.
Usability Test Notes
What did I learn? ✏️
Throughout this project, I had the opportunity to deepen my skills in several key areas. I learned the importance of storytelling—transforming complex data into engaging narratives. Collaboration proved crucial, as effective teamwork drives innovation and success. Empathy became a cornerstone, enabling me to understand and address user needs truly. Developing empathy has helped me to truly understand and address user needs, ensuring our solutions are truly user-centric. This project has been a growth journey for me, enhancing my ability to connect with users on a deeper level and create usable and accessible designs.
Thanks for being here! See you on another project! :D
