Build a new product on Facebook to find apartments.

So I am planning to go like this: First I will try to think about why would FB want to design that in the first place and I will try to set a business goal. Then I will ideate around the user problems and after that, I will move into the solution space. Does it sound ok?

Yes.

Ok, first, why would FB want to build a product to help people find apartments in the first place?

Considering FB’s mission giving power to people to build community, I can see how this fits. Because even though we rent apartments and live in those apartments, we are actually living in a community that represents our needs and our social preferences. For example if a person enjoys going out to a cinema, it would be important for him to live in a place that he can easily do so. Also, the chances are there are other people who are living nearby are also interested in cinema.

So considering the FB mission, I would say that the business goal to design this product would be:

BUSINESS GOAL: Helping people find an apartment where they could live close to likeminded people. - And here at the end I would expect people to be friends in FB with their neighbors. And this is a difficult goal, so I would also watch how fast the person finds an apartment and also the number of events or places that this person go to

Since I have set a goal for FB for this area, now I can focus on what people go through when they actually look for an apartment.

First there are two roles here. The ones who list their space and the ones who are looking for an apartment.

The lister is dealing with finding a decent person to rent his apartment, but he is more passive after he lists his apartment. Because if he lists the apartment he needs to show the people who are looking for an apartment and if there is no application he is basically waiting.

But if we focus on the person who is looking for an apartment, not only we would reach the product success easier because he would be the main decision-maker of renting a home but this user fits our business goal better. So I will try to list some of the things that this person is going through.

TASKS:

Decide on the neighborhood(s)
- Is it safe
- Is it good for my transportation needs
- What is around?
  - Supermarket
  - Cinema
  - Restaurants etc.
Filter the apartments in that neighborhood according to:
- Price
- Specific personal criteria like AC
- Etc.
Make a shortlist
Visit
Move

So considering my business goal of helping people live in a place where they feel they are in a community, it makes sense to focus first on the problem of focusing the right neighborhood for him. Especially since FB knows already about what this person likes and does not like, also his social circle I think it would bring a unique benefit to the problem of finding an apartment for a person.

And I think it is important to set the design intention here to be EASY and PERSONALIZED as much as possible so that they would feel that FB is making this difficult job easier.

So I designed a product like this -> You go to the relevant page and you select the city you are moving and automatically you see a list of neighborhoods that are ranked according to your needs. The ranking is also listed as filters on the top.

So if the person who really likes hiking we see a filter on the top saying “Close to Trails”
The cards also have this information, for example, each card says
- 2.2 miles to xx trails
- 50 restaurants in the neighborhood
- Mostly families are living here
- Your friend X and Y lives in this neigborhood
- 2 people from your FB group Chess lives here
And if the person clikcs to a filter we can just list the available aprments there via 3rd party API for the MVP.

And if we see that people are moving the

Angshuman Gupta · Answer 2 · 2019-05-28T15:44:20+0000

1. Questions:
  1. Page or Marketplace?
  2. Part of facebook.com or different product itself?
  3. Goals? Why we’re building this?
2. Users
  1. New City Dwellers → College Student
  2. Changing Jobs or City → Mid Aged
  3. Investment → Older
  4. People who want to rent out
3. Pick New City Dwellers: Their Problems:
  1. Doesn't know much about the city, area, expensive, cheap, locality
  2. Doesn’t have furniture
  3. Rent/Lease Paperwork and documentation problems
  4. Wants to make new friends both don’t know, willing to share the room
  5. Scheduling with the owner
4. Business Goals
  1. Engagement
  2. Connect People
5. Solutions
  1. Find Apartment based on Price, Locality, Friends
  2. Ability to find, rent out, buy furniture
  3. Ability to generate agreements and other documents
  4. Ability to find nearby services
  5. Rating system
  6. Ability to make and find friends
  7. Ability to list apartments
6. Prioritize:
  1. Find Apartment
  2. List Apartment
7. Metrics
  1. Number of users using this features - Find and List
  2. find/list
  3. # Found
8. Summary:
  1. Creating a page with apartment listing having filters like area, locality, price, likelihood to make friends, nearby friends
  2. Creating a page to list the apartments

sarvesh8757 · Answer 3 · 2019-07-21T07:46:15+0000

Clarifying questions:

What do you mean by a new product? Would it be a different product altogether or add a new feature on Facebook?
Is there any particular region to focus upon?
Would it be a mobile app or for all platforms like mobile, desktop and so forth?
What is the goal of adding apartments searching product/feature?

Assumptions:

This would be an apartment search feature on facebook that allows house owners or brokers listing their properties and tenants to see the listing and connect with the owners.
Given the penetration of the internet in the US, I will be focusing on the US and then it could be scaled across other countries.
The Facebook Mobile app got millions of active users I think it's prudent to launch a new feature with a mobile app.
The goal is to diversify facebook across real estate vertical that helps increase customer engagement and it will tie with the ultimate mission of facebook "to bring the world close together"

Approach:

I will explore the kinds of the users that would find apartments feature and then will move in finding use cases. After that, I will prioritize and find the most pressing pain point that would closely link to fulfill the goal of increasing customer engagement on the mobile app.Then I will brainstorm the ideas that would address the needs of users.

Users:

There are two categories of users:

House owners or brokers who would list their properties for selling or renting.
Apartment finders who would like to see a listing with detailed descriptions and clear pictures.
- Recent graduates and moved into new cities and have no idea about the local real estate.
- 25- 30 years old age group who are newly married or have a family but like to buy or rent an apartment with the least hassle possible.
- Old age people or newly retired and like to buy a home at a quiet and tranquil place.

I will be focussing on recent graduates on the buying side because these are the people who face a serious problem when moved to a new place. They are foreign to tons of things while settling down in any big city

Use Cases:

As a home finder, I would like to search for an apartment with minimum efforts involved i.e. want to see the search results as close as possible to my keywords.For instance, if I type top two bedrooms under $1k in New York City 5th avenue there won't be a need to add a filter to get results.
I would like to check a crime rate for my zip code to make sure that I would be moving in a safe region.
I would like to communicate with the listing owner and accept a reply with as soon as possible.
I would want a clear and real view for apartment including how big is the kitchen, restrooms and so forth.
I would like to compare the listings across multiple data points like price, square footage, etc.

Among all of the pain points, the most serious problem is to get a real view of an apartment because most of the time pictures been edited and misinformed a buyer. If you are not able to physically go and check the place you ended up feeling cheated. Security ranking is also a big problem for potential residents if you're not in very known locations for those you could check online but tI would add this in the roadmap and discuss in the second version.

Solutions:

We could make a compulsory adding high definition video recording for all rooms, kitchen, etc. there are few sites have an option of video addition but that's not compulsory.
We could integrate a device like Nest that has an option to do a virtual tour with real-time cameras.
We could use a Virtual Reality(VR) devices to give real house feel to the buyers having linked with VR glasses.

Recommendation:

I would recommend adding a high definition 3d video option to get real-time view of a property. The efforts involved is medium because it only requires handling storage capacity to store high-quality videos. We could have a rating system to rate the quality of video on scale 1 to 5.