Behavioral archetypes
Understanding who the homebuyer is.
Timeline
January 2022 - July 2023
Responsibilities
Product Designer collaborating with a Design Director, Senior Product Designer, and Lead User Experience Researcher
Tools
Usertesting.com, Figma, Illustrator
Overview
In the Search squad, we realized that we didn't have enough insights into who homebuyers really are. Our goal was to explore their motivations, thoughts, needs, emotions, behaviors, and challenges to gain a deeper understanding.
Pain point
To enable our team to strategically approach Search, it was essential to understand the behaviors of homebuyers. Without this information, planning for future initiatives became challenging and knowing what to built would lead to assumptions about homebuyers.
Business problem
Highlights
Five core behavioral archetypes can help all teams with a better understanding of homebuyers, to make better decisions
In the Search squad, we realized that we didn't have enough insights into who homebuyers really are. Our goal was to explore their motivations, thoughts, needs, emotions, behaviors, and challenges to gain a deeper understanding.
Timeline
Overview
Our team took an iterative approach that included running experiments within production to prove out concepts, and iterate on current experiences.
Design process
Research
This research project will provide us with insights to build buyers behavioral archetypes, by uncovering their thoughts, needs, feelings, actions, and pain points.
Goal
Objectives
Explore and understand homebuyers’ goals, thoughts, needs, feelings, actions, and pain points
Understand how participants approach search, specifically how they interact with certain elements on page e.g. list view, map view, recommendations modules, filters, search bar
Interviewing home buyers
Methodology
Our team conducted 1:1 moderated interviews using usertesting.com with multiple homebuyers at various stages of their journey.
Participant characteristics
First-time homebuyers, repeat homebuyers
Actively searching for homes
Millennials and Gen X
Income $40K +
Empathy mapping
Rough behavioral archetypes
Summarizing the data for each individual
Our team created rough behavioral archetypes focused on a narrative that summarized participants’ home buying journey.
We focused on organizing their:
- Goals
- Pain points
- Needs, thoughts, feelings, and actions
Attitudinal spectrum
For each archetype, our team began to map out what feeling each archetype is drawn to.
Outcome
Behavioral archetype wheel
Our team discovered five different archetypes that represent who the homebuyer is today. Each archetype has key characteristics that drive their behavior towards home buying.
