Roles:
User Research
Product Strategy
UI Design
Interaction Design
Usability Testing
Tools
Figjam
Notion
Maze
Figma
Dovetail
Timeline
5 weeks
Current problems with groups creation on
My Place
The primary frustration is that the process of creating a group on the platform is lengthy and inconvenient, requiring users to obtain admin privileges from the My Place team directly.
Secondary Frustration
A secondary frustration is that the platform does not effectively communicate its value and purpose, resulting in a lack of encouragement for users to join groups.
Usability challenges
Our team conducted a review of the group and community pages on My Place and discovered that they do not effectively communicate their value and goals to users. Additionally, we identified two significant usability issues with the group experience:
1. The website lacks a clear call to action to create a group, making it difficult for users to initiate the process.
The button to join a group is challenging to locate, potentially leading to frustration and decreased engagement.
Hypothesis
Hypothesis no.1:
Groups are My Place key features
Hypothesis no.2
The group owner is a key My Place user
Our second hypothesis was that the group owner is a key user of My Place, as they drive group creation and community building on the platform. Given their essential role in the platform's success, we decided to focus on improving their user experience as a priority in enhancing the group creation process.
Persona
Mark
Hypothesis no.3
2 key behaviours inside the group
Our team identified two key behaviours that determine the success of a group on My Place.
The first behaviour is that users must be willing to share their homes in desirable locations on the platform.
The second behaviour is that users must be willing to book those homes from other members on the website.
We hypothesized that by designing the group creation experience to facilitate these two behaviours, we can improve the overall engagement and conversion rates on My Place.
Research goals
To understand the motivations and concerns of people who are interested in sharing their home with friends or booking accommodation through a platform like My Place.
To identify the key factors that influence a user's decision to share their home or book accommodation, such as location, safety, price, and amenities.
To explore the user's experience with similar platforms and identify pain points or areas of satisfaction.
To gather insights on how to design the group creation experience on My Place to facilitate the sharing and booking of homes among group members.
Research methods
Customer interviews
Airbnb Usability Test
User Survey
Research Findings
When sharing their property users need to feel confident that their home is in good hands and that there are procedures in place to handle any issues that may arise. By addressing these concerns, we can create a more trustworthy and reliable platform for users to share their homes with friends and other members of their communities.
Users value the safety and security features provided by Airbnb, which enable them to trust the platform when renting or booking accommodation. By incorporating similar safety features and policies into the My Place platform, we can increase user trust and confidence in the sharing and booking process, ultimately driving greater engagement and conversion rates.
In the context of My Place, this means that ensuring users feel safe and secure when sharing their homes is fundamental to the success of the platform.
Research Conclusion:
According to Maslow's hierarchy of needs individuals must have their basic physiological and safety needs met before they can focus on fulfilling higher-level needs such as social and emotional needs.
Changing the design focus
Based on our research and analysis, we shifted the design focus of MyPlace towards prioritizing safety over social connections. While the social and community-building aspects of MyPlace are still important, we believe that a strong focus on safety will create a more positive and secure environment for users to connect and share their homes which will to attracting more users and increase user engagement and satisfaction
Ideation
In the ideation phase, we took the research findings and framed the design challenge into HMW (How Might We) questions. We brainstormed ideas on how to improve the current usability of the platform and add new features.
One of our key HMW questions was:
How might we make users feel that their home is safe and secure when sharing their house in a group?
What can we improve
Group discoverability
What can we add
Group insurance
To address the challenge of making users feel that their homes are safe and secure when sharing their house in a group, we decided to focus on two key areas:
group discoverability
and adding group insurance.
By improving the discoverability of groups, we can help users find and join groups that align with their interests and needs, making it more likely that they will feel comfortable sharing their homes with other group members. Additionally, by adding group insurance, we can provide an extra layer of protection and peace of mind to users, further increasing their sense of safety and security when using MyPlace to share their homes.
Competitive Analysis
Meetup
When conducting a competitor analysis for MyPlace, we looked at Meetup, a platform that focuses on creating and joining groups. Meetup also offers group insurance, which is a unique feature that protects organizers from potential risks associated with running events.
Airbnb
We also looked at how Airbnb enhances trust on its platform by making insurance easy to discover on its listings.
Solution
Group creation flow
We redesigned the user flow for a group owner creating a group that incorporates elements from the Meet Up group creation flow. We added a paid option that offers the group owner the possibility of adding insurance and potential group perks as well as implementing rules that make the group experience safer for its members.
Wireframes
We started by sketching out rough wireframes in Figma to quickly iterate through different design ideas and address usability problems defined earlier on.
a page where users can browse different groups on the platform.
a page for reviewing and joining existing groups
and group creation flow for the group owner
Styles
Prototype
Goals:
The goals of the prototype are as follows:
Make the call to action to join and create a group easy to discover
Create a group creation flow that embodies the idea of safety and security around sharing houses on the platform
Make insurance on a group page easy to discover
Groups pages
Group creation flow
High Fidelity Prototype
Learning
If we had the opportunity to interview actual My Place users, we could have gained a better understanding of the specific benefits and challenges they are experiencing on the platform. By speaking directly with My Place users, we could have also gathered more nuanced feedback and insights that might not have been captured through general user research.
If we had received more feedback at the earlier stages of prototyping, we could have identified the missed opportunity of not having a sales page explaining the benefits of creating a group on My Place. Running user testing earlier could have allowed us to catch this issue and make necessary changes to the prototype.
Conclusion
In conclusion, ensuring safety on a platform where users share their homes is of utmost importance. By focusing on safety in the group creation process, My Place can establish itself as a trustworthy platform for home-sharing, which is crucial for building trust with users and promoting growth.
Business Hypothesis
We believe that by introducing paid group options and offering perk packages to group owners, My Place can increase its revenue. These perks could include services such as Deliveroo delivery, which could be purchased by group owners and offered to members as an added benefit, providing an additional revenue stream for the platform.
Next Steps
As a next step, we plan to test the willingness of My Place owners to offer and pay for these types of perks in their groups. This will help us understand the potential revenue impact of offering these additional services and determine if it aligns with the needs and preferences of My Place's user base.