Buying power feature - Design roadmap
Creating a design roadmap to improve the product experience.
Timeline
May 2022 - October 2022
Role
Senior Product Designer
Tools
Figma, Confluence, Jira
Overview
Consumer pain point
Consumers often don’t understand what they can afford based on their financial information and often time have to scale back on their home criteria because of price.
For the buying power feature, there were opportunities to address usability issues and enhance buying power.
Business problem
For the business that operates under a lead-generation model, consumers were interacting less with buying power impacting revenue.
Constraints and partnerships
Initially, buying power was integrated within the listing detail page (LDP). For any product enhancements, we would need to make the LDP team aware of any changes.
Highlights
Buying power badges
Consumers can understand their buying power for each individual property based on their financial information.
Calculating buying power
Consumers can input a few details about themselves to understand how each individual property falls within their budget or buying power.
Search for affordable properties
When buying power is saved to a consumers profile, consumers can search for properties that are affordable to them.
Timeline
Product experimentation and launches
Our team took an iterative approach that included running experiments within production to prove out concepts, and iterate on current experiences.
June 2022 - October 2022
Process - From testing to design roadmap
Requirements
Hypothesis
If we address usability issues and improve comprehension of the buying power feature, then engagement with financing CTAs, such as 'Get pre-approved’ will increase because users will have confidence and trust with the feature.
What we want to learn
Engagement with buying power feature, and save data to profile.
Role
Collaboration and definition of roadmap and features with the direct team, and dependent teams, including LDP and Search team
Senior Product Designer driving end-to-end design process
Research
Testing usability and comprehension
The study focused on understanding the usability and comprehension of content on this page to better understand how consumers interacted with and interpreted the content. I created a test plan that defined the study goal, demographics, and outline for the unmoderated test using usertesting.com.
Synthesis
Research
Test participant sentiment: While buying power is a useful feature, some participants expressed their confusion of functionality.
Synthesis
Common themes that aren’t working
Beyond the scope of the study, I not only identified issues with the single page, but issues throughout the flow and opportunities for improvement.
“How might we” statements
Content design
Defining the conversation we want to have with consumers
Summary of conversation
Conversational flow
Design roadmap
The design roadmap focused on what could be accomplished now and later. Scope, time, and constraints were variables used to create a design roadmap.
💡 Fun fact: This was the first time a design roadmap had been presented to my direct team, design, and product leaders. Because this had such a positive response, I created a template for this, and it became a basis for how designers and content designers can work together to define and document a design roadmap for any initiative.
Outcome
Before
Improving the content design to communicate a value prop
The study focused on understanding the language and content of the buying power results page. Beyond this page, consumers did mention what was and wasn’t working for them.
❌ “Save” CTA was unclear
After
Consumers are now aware of what buying is and how this will help them in their home buying journey. The CTA gives consumers an affordance of what is being saved and how.
✅ Clear value prop
Before
Addressing technical errors for Veterans
Consumers who indicated that they have funds for a downpayment, would be shown the incorrect buying power badge because the available funds would clear and convert it to $0.
❌ Incorrect calculations
After
For Veterans, the available funds is preserved in the calculation, reducing calculation errors and properly educating consumers about what they can afford based on their financial situation.
✅ Corrected calculations
Before
Removing repetitive badges
When a “Not available” or “Out-of-reach” was shown, the experience failed to give context as to what these badges meant and left consumers at a dead end.
❌ Repetitive badges
After
✅ Consolidating badges with clear messaging
By removing the “Not available” badge and only showing “Out-of-reach” allowed consumers to understand that the property was not affordable. In addition, clear messaging was added to contextualize what “Out-of-reach” means.
New feature
Consumers can now search for homes based on their buying power ranges. This helps consumer stay focused during their home search and within budget.
