Skylight Technologies: Rental Marketplace
SUMMARY
Led end-to-end design for a rental marketplace, conducting user research, creating wireframes, and validating solutions through usability testing before delivering high-fidelity, production-ready designs.
TEAM
1 Product Manager
3 Engineers
ROLE
Product Designer
THE PROBLEM
Many listing platforms fail to align tenants with the right apartments to match their diverse lifestyles leading to dissatisfaction and high turnover rates. Additionally tenants face challenges effectively reaching property managers further complicating the search and eroding trust.
OTHER KEY ISSUES
Online platforms used for apartment hunting lack effective filtering options and make it difficult to find crucial information. This creates barriers for prospective tenants to make well-informed decisions and increases the time involved in the search process.
STEP 1: RESEARCH
JOURNEY MAPPING
I used journey mapping after conducting interviews to visualize the end-to-end apartment leasing experience from the renter’s perspective. This helped us understand what users are doing, thinking, and feeling at each stage—from searching online to signing a lease and moving in.
The map highlighted key touchpoints, emotions, and pain points across the journey. It revealed moments of frustration, like unclear listings and poor follow-up, as well as opportunities to build trust through timely updates and transparent information. This process guided us in identifying areas for improvement that directly align with user needs.
INTERVIEWS
I conducted user interviews with renters to uncover pain points in the apartment leasing process. Participants, primarily young professionals, shared their experiences from initial search to move-in. The interviews focused on motivations for moving, how they searched for apartments, interactions with property managers, and how they felt throughout the journey.
Common issues included unclear or outdated listings, poor communication from leasing agents, and frustrating application processes. Many users felt confused due to a lack of transparency and inconsistent experiences across management companies. These insights revealed key opportunities to improve clarity, responsiveness, and ease in the leasing journey.
USER FLOWS
User flows were created as a tool to aid in the definition of core features that would be implemented. From sign up to requesting a tour
STEP 2: DESIGN IDEATION
WIREFRAMES
Based on initial feedback from users I wireframed a few different iterations. One which follows industry standard patterns, another which followed familiar patterns but applied in a new manner.
USABILITY TESTING
I usability tested these prototypes with prospective users to determine which method was optimal
Option 1: Swipe to search. Although useful to pre filter down to apartments which matched all of the user’s criteria, it was deemed too limiting as you couldn’t freely search the list of results
Option 2: Map/List view search. This was determined to be the optimal option as it provided the flexibility to search many listings quickly while filtering down to what is most important.
INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
Having defined what pattern is most familiar and optimal to search for an apartment, we moved forward with refining the information architecture. In this case we’ll focus on the listing details.
Primary Listing Information:
Our users highlighted the importance of rent price, move in date, and size of apartment as the most important pieces which impact their ability to qualify a listing.
Secondary Listing Information:
We ran A/B tests with our users to understand which additional information was deemed most important after that. The ability to request a tour or contact the manager came in first quickly followed by amenities, then property description.
STEP 3: HIGH FIDELITY PROTOTYPES
Find apartments via map view
The map view was chosen as a common pattern across nearly all listing platforms to search through apartment options quickly.
Filtering
The filtering experience was driven by user feedback, allowing for an efficient method to find apartments that best fit them.
Tour Request Form
The tour request form contacts the managers directly. Future implementations would provide a user insight into a given manager’s responsiveness.
STEP 4: HANDOFF
REDLINES & ANNOTATIONS
After approval from all stakeholders and once feasibility concerns had been quashed. I redlined and annotated my work to hand off to development.
CONCLUSION
OUTCOME
Delivered in the middle of 2022, Skylight saw a notable increase in leads generated from their site relative to alternates (Zillow, Apartments.com).
After my departure the company direction pivoted to an exclusive network driven leasing platform, offering a portal for real estate agents to have access to a catalogue of high end listings to manage and share with apartment hunters.
LEARNINGS
As my first large scale project going from 0 to 1 it was incredibly exciting. My biggest takeaway was how focusing on the users needs drives positive outcomes.