The Creation of Buildium’s Applicant Center and the Redesign of the Rental Application
Context
The problem:
Buildium's rental application lacked essential features, including clear guidance on requirements and progress-saving. This left prospective tenants uncertain about expectations and prevented them from resuming their application if they couldn't complete it in one session. This ultimately led to delays in filling units, inconveniencing property managers, and presenting challenges for prospective tenants in securing their desired apartments.
For 10 months (4/2021 - 2/2022), I led the project's design and research efforts, cross-functionally collaborating with a scrum team consisting of a product manager, four software engineers, a QA engineer, a content designer, and a UX researcher.
I was responsible for:
Moderating research calls
Facilitating workshops and collaborative sessions
Low-fidelity wireframing (mobile + web)
High-fidelity mockups (mobile + web)
My role & the team:
Our goal:
Support our customers in accelerating vacancy turnaround times, and streamlining the application process.
Discover + Define
Giving our customers what they want
For years, property managers consistently requested two things, improvements to the Buildium rental application and a dedicated applicant portal for prospective tenants. We knew it was time to give our customers what they’d been asking for, so we decided to explore these requests further.
Original Buildium rental application
Gaining more insight into the problem
Working closely with my product manager and UX researcher, we were eager to uncover the preferences, expectations, concerns, and pain points of property managers and prospective tenants. Our goal was to gain valuable insights into their experiences with the existing rental application, the application process, and the concept of an applicant portal. To make this happen, we crafted a research plan and moderator guide. We then conducted eight interview sessions, engaging with both property managers (4) and prospective tenants (4).
So what did we learn?
Property managers are seeking draft-saving capabilities, and improved information architecture on the rental application, in addition to a comprehensive applicant portal to help efficiently streamline and enhance the rental application process.
Communication challenges can lead to misunderstandings in the rental process.
The absence of a draft-saving feature leads to missed leasing opportunities for property managers.
Difficulty in presenting rental application information clearly results in confusion for all involved.
There's a need for a comprehensive applicant portal to streamline and accelerate the application process.
Often experienced frustration due to no progress-saving option for rental applicants.
Unclear requirements lead to confusion and errors in their rental application.
A mobile-friendly application is important as many use their mobile devices over their desktop.
Prospective tenants seek a rental application and process that is easy, accommodates progress-saving, offers clear expectations and requirements, and is accessible and user-friendly, especially on mobile devices.
Now what?
Our research gave us a better understanding of the challenges and expectations property managers and prospective tenants had in relation to the rental application and the overall rental process. My team and I began collaborating on how we wanted to tackle alleviating pain points and meeting the expectations of our users. We knew this was going to be a large effort.
Phasing out the delivery of value
To help scope this project, I led a story-mapping workshop with my PM and engineers. Through this workshop, we visually organized, prioritized, and planned designs, features, and workflows. This process played a vital role in emphasizing a user-centric development approach and enabled us to break up our project into distinct phases, often called 'slices.' Our first slice prioritized improvements to the rental application and the foundational structure of the applicant portal.
Story mapping done in Mural
Prioritized workflows for mobile + web:
Complete a rental application
Account creation
Login
Forgot/reset password
Save a draft
Completing a draft application
Ideating
Analyzing the competition
Before hopping into any designs, my product manager and I conducted a competitive analysis within the rental application domain. Through this analysis, we assessed our competitors, identifying those who required account creation for rental applications and those offering progress-saving features. This analysis also served as a wellspring of inspiration, providing valuable insights into prevalent design patterns that enabled us to better position ourselves in the market.
Chart from the competitive analysis
Mapping the journey to a user-centric revamp
After identifying key considerations for the rental application and applicant portal, my product manager, content designer, and I collaborated on a user flow map. This provided a high-level, efficient, user-centric path through the rental application process, fostering alignment among team members and stakeholders, and serving as a foundation for detailed design and development plans, ultimately ensuring a better user experience and product success.
Section of our user flow mapping
Prototype + Test
The Applicant Center was born!
Naming the applicant portal was easy. We decided on ‘Applicant Center’ to ensure consistency with our resident portal, known as the Resident Center. This choice not only aligns with our branding but we believe this would help users seamlessly transition onto their resident portal once approved, eliminating any learning curve.
Low and high fidelity wireframes of the Applicant Center
It takes a village
Designing was an absolute blast! To ensure a collaborative and dynamic design process, I adopted various strategies. I made it a priority to share my screens during our weekly design team critiques. For more in-depth discussions and idea exchange, I engaged in 1:1 brainstorming sessions with fellow designers. To keep my scrum team aligned and foster collaboration and communication, I organized bi-weekly design reviews. Additionally, I reached out to colleagues via Slack, recruiting internal testers who were both prospective and current tenants. This internal testing approach accelerated our feedback loop and allowed for quicker iterations. Involving everyone in this process significantly strengthened the design process.
Design screens from Sketch
Design callouts
Iterations of the rental application stepper
Application transparency:
I expanded the rental application stepper to include all sections of the rental application, simplifying the process for prospective tenants by clarifying the required information.
Effective communication:
Collaboration with my product manager, content designer, and marketing team was essential for crafting concise reminder emails for prospective tenants. These emails were essential for fostering effective communication.
Confirmation email sent to prospective tenants
Getting the mobile interface right
Our research emphasized the need and importance of having a mobile-friendly rental application. Despite the challenge of limited screen real estate. I explored numerous design options for the application stepper and sticky navigation. However, technical limitations led us to choose simplicity: a horizontal stepper and no sticky footer.
Mobile wireframes of the rental application
Mobile iterations for the application stepper + sticky footer
Save application progress:
I introduced a sticky navigation footer with options for users to progress, cancel, and most importantly, save and resume their application later if needed. To ensure the security of personal information in the application, we made it a requirement for users to create an account before saving.
This account creation process automatically enrolls the prospective tenant in the applicant portal. Upon saving, users receive a confirmation email.
Iterations of the sticky footer
External feedback
With the completion of prototypes, the next step was to test the new rental application and applicant portal. Collaborating with my product manager, we created a usability test plan and conducted six usability test sessions. Since we’d gotten feedback throughout the entire design process, the test went really well.
Test callouts
4/6 participants didn’t skip the account creation upon starting the application
Participants didn’t always notice the stepper was interactive
Participants found the application-saving process to be intuitive
Release: The Applicant Center is live!
Illustrations I designed for the introduction modal
The new rental application — web + mobile
1 MILLION
Applicant Center users created
27K
9K
Draft applications saved since releasing
Draft applications submitted
Next steps: expanding beyond release
Introduce the Applicant Center with add-on and VAS(value-added service) market opportunities.
Offering screening/background checks in the portal
Invite roommates and cosigners to an application
Enable prospective tenants to pay their security and hold deposits in the portal
The first release of the Applicant Center
Takeaways:
I realized less is more when designing for mobile. Having less screen real estate helps keep things simple.
Internal feedback is valuable. It helped me work more efficiently and streamlined the testing and iteration process.
It’s important to check out what your competitors are doing. The competitive analysis gave my team so much valuable insight.