ForeverNest
Group A1: Adhiti Chundur, Daisy Gollis, Aashita Grover, Aprameya Pandit & Sean Wang
Executive Summary
Home-buying can be a complicated and stressful process to go through - it’s hard to know what information to gather and who you can trust. Our research revealed that first-time home buyers are looking to learn quickly and effectively. In other words, they seek relevant bites of information, sourced from credible sources, that can be assimilated quickly. People want to be able to browse through a lot of of relevant information, preferably from people who have prior knowledge and experience, in order to gain a foundation and take the next best steps forward in the process. They want to be able to relate to others before making hard decisions and investments in the real-estate industry.
The insights we gained through our user experience research, helped us formulate ‘ForeverNest’.
ForeverNest is a platform that speaks to first-time homebuyers’ desire to have human touches throughout this process. Throughout the platform, they can relate to other like-minded experiences through anecdotes and personal accounts in the form of podcasts, articles, and videos.
Problem
We aim to bridge the gap between digesting relevant information quickly and having a human-centered experience while making such an important long-term decision, such as investing in buying a home.
Methods
To create this experience, we utilized a variety of generative and evaluative methods to understand our target audience: first-time inexperienced home-buyers.
Overall, the following methods were employed to gather data, extract insights and drive the research forward :
Semi-Structured Interviews
Think Alouds
Contextual inquiry
Affinity Diagramming
Speed Dating
Storyboards
Usability Testing
Evidence
During our research, first-time buyers voiced that they want to be able to hear and learn from other people who have gone through similar experiences. For example, one of our participants shared that “hearing personal experiences & anecdotes is more impactful [to them] than ‘stone-cold’ facts from the Internet.”
People overwhelmingly prefer … - When decisions are hard and hold weight, speaking to another person provides the emotional aspect and support that is needed. They often seek this in close family - but problems with that is that parents bought homes a long time ago, or they bring their own perception of that relationship. Our platform provides that connection to other people, but it isn’t biased or colored by a previous relationship you have with them. The information presented is current too.
Consolidated in one place … - Currently the user has to browse a given site for information pertaining to certain aspects of the process, and then has to go about reviewing a completely different site, in order to gather information pertaining to another aspect of the overall process. This approach is both time consuming and overwhelming. Our platform aims to do some of this grunt work for them.
Higher trust in relating to other… - Currently, guides and other online home-buying resources present stone cold facts - they don’t bring in any sense of empathy or emotion. We found that other stories and anecdotes are really valuable. Some people for example enjoy watching Youtube videos, as it consists of another person talking and sharing what matters to them, and what they think could be useful to someone else. Our platform hopes in building a sense of community and helps people connect with each other and share their perspectives, based on their experiences in the home-buying process.
Insights
As mentioned in the evidence, currently, it is up to users to go out of their way to seek advice and relatability from these impersonal online sources. These searches are time-consuming, lack credibility and are inconvenient. People want to be able to filter through lots of relevant information quickly while still feeling like there is a personal aspect in everything they’re absorbing.
The solution would thus be to provide a platform where users can learn from each other’s experiences, across various stages in the home-buying process, while being able to access relevant curated snippets of information.
Solution
Home-buying can be a complicated and stressful process to go through - it’s hard to know what information to gather and who you can trust. ForeverNest is a platform that speaks to first-time homebuyers’ desire to have human touches throughout this process. Throughout the platform, they can relate to other like-minded experiences through anecdotes and personal accounts in the form of podcasts, articles, and videos.
We aim to bridge the gap between digesting relevant information quickly and having a human-centered experience while making such an important long-term decision.
To create this experience, we utilized a variety of generative and evaluative methods to understand our target audience: first-time inexperienced home-buyers. Our insights stemmed from contextual inquiries, think alouds, speed dating, and experience prototyping.
During our research, first-time buyers voiced that they want to be able to hear and learn from other people who have gone through similar experiences. For example, one of our participants shared that “hearing personal experiences & anecdotes is more impactful [to them] than ‘stone-cold’ facts from the Internet.”
Right now, it is up to users to go out of their way to seek advice and relatability from these impersonal online sources. These searches are time-consuming and inconvenient, and people want to be able to filter through lots of relevant information quickly while still feeling like there is a personal aspect in everything they’re absorbing.
Whether they are looking to build a foundation at the beginning of their search or need practical support at various stages throughout home-buying, ForeverNest allows first-time buyers to connect with similar others and easily sift through curated, relatable home-buying content. We hope to provide our users with a safe, reliable community where they can access the right information to make an educated, human decision!
A “Discover” page, highlighting various recommendations, presented to the user, based on their current stage in the overall home-buying process.
Embedded features within the presented content enable users to interact and engage with each other, to share their thoughts and perspectives on specific aspects of the content, through the pop-up comment sections.
A user profile helps in bookmarking, archiving, sharing and keeping track of the content that a given user would’ve already consumed. It would also help in networking with other users.
Curated content is categorically organized and presented to the user, in the form of articles, videos and podcasts.
