MY ROLE
As the Principal UX Designer, I led a group of designers tasked with addressing a growing concern over real users’ confusion when using the website and mobile app for Marble. Through varied strategies of research, we learned areas that were significant blockers that needed to be reevaluated and redesigned.
key responsibilities: user research and synthesizing, user flows, personas, wireframing, high-fidelity prototyping, design system
WHAT IS MARBLE?
Marble is a virtual rental management service which assists homeowners to effortlessly list their homes for rent. Additionally, Marble services tenants by placing them in the perfect property and offers maintenance dispatch, rent payment management, and a friendly support team to solve any issues that the tenant may have. Marble, in essence, serves to be a holistic service for all parties in the home renting process.
THE ISSUE: CONFUSION
Feedback from users old and new all hint at varying levels of confusion. However Marble doesn’t understand where that confusion is coming from.
My goal was to intimately learn the nature of a homeowner and tenant. What are their frustrations? What causes them stress and anxiety? For tenants, what home search process in Marble creates confusion? For home-owners, what listing and home renting processes cause confusion?
U S E R R E S E A R C H
D I S C O V E R Y
All findings from interviews with homeowners, tenants, and marble hub users were synthesized under global tags. Using two methods, inductive and deductive, I used the following global tags: Goal: What is the person trying to accomplish as an outcome. Need: Something a person needs to fulfill a goal. Motivation: Why the person is trying to achieve that goal. Task: Something a person does to achieve a goal. Pain Point: A barrier or difficulty towards accomplishing a goal. Tools: A tool a person uses to try to accomplish a goal.
Main takeaways were then collected and two major themes began to become more and more evident: trust & convenience. All design decisions would reflect these two themes.
Research focus was dedicated to user-interviews and the Marble Hub. Questions were organized to gather qualitative and quantitative data. I was interested in how users felt and behaved. Three major groups were interviewed: homeowners, tenants, and Marble users.
Inconvenient: Landing Page
Usability testing and interviews with Marble users all had a common frustrating with Marble’s current landing page. Users were confused with what Marble had to offer. Additionally, the platform did not allow users to learn more about its services without first signing up for an account. This was inconvenient to the users as most commented that they did not want to commit to an account before trusting that Marble was a valued resource.
K E Y F E A T U R E : LANDING PAGE
Here we see the redesigned Marble landing page. A more appropriate hero image is used with a clearly defined search call to action. Scrolling down we learn what Marble has to offer through an integrated carousel: support team, end to end tenant placement, 24/7 maintenance, and digital management. Below and right above a proper footer, we have social proof from active marble users further depicting Marble’s value of being trusting and convenient.
Landing Page — what I designed
K E Y F E A T U R E : FILTERS
Rental Search Filters - what I designed
Marble’s current website had no ability to filter properties for potential tenants to narrow down their search. As we learned from research, tenants want the convenience of searching for homes within a preferred price range and by number of bedrooms/baths and home type. The redesign allowed for these filters. Also missing from the current website is a GPS map of where the homes are located as users were confused prior where the listings were located in their selected city.
K E Y F E A T U R E : LEASE GENERATION
Homeowners communicated overwhelming confusion and frustration with the lease generation process. Homeowners would have to message Marble support to request a form. A link to a separate website would send them to a typeform that the homeowner would have to fill out. Once submitted, revisions to the lease would be sent through a Google Document. Once the Google Document was confirmed to be completed, a Hello Sign link would then be sent. This would send homeowners to a new website where the lease would finally be completed. Homeowners mentioned they did not trust this process as it was overly complicated and confusing.
Lease Generation - what I designed
A fully integrated lease generation user flow was created to simplify the process. By allowing the entire process to live directly on the Marble website, this gave homeowners the trust they needed in Marble to manage their properties.
K E Y F E A T U R E : FEEDBACK
Responsive Feedback - what I designed
Research taught us that communication is extremely important to tenants and Marble users shared that it was challenging to find their needs met. As such, I introduced responsive feedback to the users based on key moments when using the Marble service. The image on the right shows that Marble emails tenants each step of the home application process from applying, confirming that the application has been viewed, their acceptance by the homeowner, and when the lease is ready to be signed. By introducing responsive feedback to the users, it gives confidence and trust in Marble’s service.
R E S U L T S
Rounds of usability testing and AB testing proved the efficacy of our design changes and new features. Most notably, users shared that the fully integrated lease generation feature proved to be a large added value to Marble. Overall satisfaction rate and SUS (System Usability Scale) scores were above 90%, compared to retrospective scores of 40% - more than double the improvement from users.
A key next step that the team would like to explore and push for is implementing the lease generation feature within Marble’s mobile platform while keeping the functionality frictionless and convenient.
What People Are Saying
“Bach, was a great asset to our Marble team and it was a pleasure to work with him. He is an extremely talented story-teller who creates beautiful products. His ability to dive deeper into our user insights to discover what users value was extremely valuable and was vital to keeping us on task with designing for our users. Bach would be a great addition to any design team and I cannot wait to see what other aesthetically appealing creations he will produce in the future.”
— Elisa S. (UX Designer)
“I've never worked with someone who works quite as hard as Bach. His commitment to delivering products that meet his high personal standard is unwavering, and tends to inspire the people around him to be their best. One of his biggest value adds to our team in particular, was his ability to combine his skills in visual design, storytelling, and public speaking to create visually stunning and highly engaging presentations. He has also been known to tell a joke or two when comic relief is needed! Would love to work with Bach again in the future.”
— Fraser O. (UX Researcher)