Since most people are bearing the rental financial pressure and don’t know much about the prefabrication industry and how it can cut down their housing cost, they may need Pre.Module to help them access the “mysterious” prefab field.
In a 3-month Boot Camp with other challenges going on.
Full-stack UX designer
Researcher, UI Designer, Project Manager, & Marketer.
How to differentiate from other renting platform?
How to intrigue users’ interest in prefab?
Considering further development and launch.
With MAP and TOOLs in bag, let’s go to find the Problem Dynasty
The whole process of solving a problem can be represented by the two-diamond chart, iterating between diverging and converging when going through the stages of empathize, define, ideate, and test.
In the real estate market, the demand for living space is far larger than the supplies, resulting in higher trading prices than usual. Most people, especially young professionals, are facing relatively high rental financial pressure.
To relieve the tension in the real estate market, several methods have been conducted to provide affordable housings, among which prefabrication has been proved for its ability to reduce construction cost.
of the full-time minimum wage spent on rent
low-income households spend more than half of their income
cheaper than a stick-built home, and possibly even more
However, such type of architecture has not been widely accepted yet. Few people know about the prefab industry and how they can access prefabricated buildings, even with strong interests.
Modular construction only has 2-3% market share even in the well accepted markets.
of young professionals that did the survey have not heard of prefabrication before
After getting the Problem Dynasty, how we would conquer it?
How Might We educate and encourage young professionals to access prefab in order to reduce their rental financial pressure?
When facing the new term and technology they are not familiar with, people tend to need some platform where they can learn about this topic and can easily access it when they want to.
Most renters are looking for some methods to reduce their rent and manage their living cost better, considering the long-term.
Info platform where users can get the industry introduction and trending projects information.
A visual map would help users know clearly where the surrounding prefab buildings are and where they can access them.
Community where users can share opinions about prefab with each other and give feedbacks.
Users are always expecting for convenient online experience, saving them lots of time.
So many opinions and ways, let’s narrow down and focus.
I want to check if there are some desired prefab buildings nearby to make sure prefab is accessible.
I want to read through the detailed building information to make sure it can actually relieve my rental financial pressure without compromising life quality.
Search the nearby buildings by some preferences.
Get the detailed building information, especially about the living cost and amenities.
Based on pain points and user stories, the task flow has been created to help me think about how the user would interact with the product and give me a baseline of main screens that need to be designed.
This task flow shows how the user search for prefab buildings nearby and check the detailed information to rent some prefab suites.
See the direction, why hold back our passion for constructing?
Based on pain points and user stories, the task flow has been created to help me think about how the user would interact with the product and give me a baseline of main screens that need to be designed.
TO find the available prefab rental buildings nearby and get their
detailed information.
With the rough blueprint in mind, I feel like it is necessary to get out of the ivory tower and see what the real-world projects look like.
After revising the ideas by pen, I put them into the grey-scale digital world to see if it’s gonna survive or not.
When the wireframe is qualified to survive, I move onto considering upgrading its life quality. With the help of my peers, I conducted two rounds of user testing and have collected some valuable points to revise my wireframe.
“I don’t know what Prefab is.”
“Where to find the information introduction? What’s the gallery for?”
“Co-living? I don’t want to share life with others if I can afford the rent.”
Add an introduction to Prefab
Re-adjust the layout to highlight the info board and more practical categories
“I cannot find the filter button.”
“Did I select these options? or they are disabled?”
“How could I go back? Were the selections applied? ”
Use widely-recognized filter icon and clearer hierarchy
Add reset and apply button to help user recognize the states
“Meaningless nav bar and I tend to ignore the map with cards listed at the top. ”
“What these buildings are? Prefab or common buildings?”
Develop a global navigation bar
Modify the layout to show the prefab theme
No one would like the plainly black-white world. Color and clear product images are necessary, just working like the flag for our dynasty.
- Static
- Structured
- Modern
-
Professional
- Cozy
- Clean
Based on the colors extracted from the moodboard, I rate the color combinations by uniqueness, fitness, and accessibility. Then try to inject the possibly suitable set into the home page and decided on the final color palette, which is the 6th combination in this case.
Starting from sketch, I explored different wordmarks and decide on the one that involves both prefabrication and module construction, and can also represent prefab architecture style a bit.
Standard size of Prefab Commodity
Typical Prefab Building Shape
According to "Human Interface Guidelines", application icon is designed and developed to make sure it meets all the industry standards.
With the stage set up, now the solution is ready to be put into spotlight and shine.
On the home page, we have information section to let us learn about the perfab industry.
No matter we want to own, rent, or book a prefab suite for trip, we can always find resource here.
As we can see, prefab building can help us save money by customizing furnishing, saving energy and construction cost.
Now get our own dynasty, how we defend its supremacy.
To let more people like our dynasty, marketing is necessary. The responsive website is designed to advertise Pre.Module:
Can provide everything users need to know about prefab.
Has involved almost every way in which users can access prefab.
Would let users benefit much from what prefab building can provide.
To make up for mobile app’s constraints, iPad has been chosen for its LiDAR camera and larger workspace, which allows for user scanning the interior of prefab suite and share it, as well as more engaging 3D map view.
Sustainable development means a lot for countries, so what’s next?
To continuously develop this app and launch it with the help of developers and other designers, UI library is created for organized and efficient hand-off.
To Solve Problem:
this app would bridge young professionals that
have seriously high rental pressure with modern prefab industry and relieve users’ pain quite a bit and
improve their life.
For Industry Development:
after educating users with the industry
knowledge, there would be more people knowing the prefab industry, which would correct many misunderstanding
about prefabrication now and push the industrial further development.
For Sustainability:
considering the features of fast and easy
construction of prefabricated building, they would be renovated and removed easily without generating much
construction waste that would result in land, air, and water pollution.
To figure out how the app would develop in long term, I picked “SUPERFAN” Torot Card as the starting point.
The main rule of engagement relies on the elegant visual design and some inspiration design, together with the technologically engaging interaction.
However, people’s tastes are different and may change with time, some really fancy image style for some user at some certain time may be really awful in the near future.
The user community would a huge group of royal consumers for the prefab manufacturers and would impact the future architecture and construction.
Accessibility:
Accessibility needs to be improved at next stage.
According to WCAG standards, need to make sure every text passes AA, or even AAA test.
Launch
Start collaborating with developers to see how to make this
project move even further and put it into function.
Good design is always based on robust research, which provides strong rationale back-up for the design.
Working in silo would not bring about a genius design, but would make it easy to overthink and let us burned out. So, let’s go outside, looking for some review and feedback, and come back with a refreshed mind.
Work never ends and we could never be perfect. Stick with the timeline set in advance and we would be confident that we are prepared.
