Housing Made Easy For Bruins.
Role
Product Designer. Collaborated with 1 designer, PM, marketing, and developers.
Duration
May 2023 - Present
Tools
Figma, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator, Canva
UCLA students can’t find apartments.
Context
Finding apartments near UCLA is a daunting challenge for many students, as the demand for housing often exceeds the availability. With limited on-campus housing, students often rely on upperclassmen connections to secure off-campus accommodations, leading to a competitive and often exclusive housing market. Those who are unable to tap into these connections are left navigating a landscape rife with overpriced rentals, subpar living conditions, and less-than-ideal locations. Issues such as leaking, pest problems, and noisy neighborhoods further exacerbate the struggle for suitable housing, creating additional stress for students already juggling academic responsibilities and extracurricular activities.
BruinRent offers a simple solution.
Solution
At BruinRent, we prioritized addressing students' apartment-hunting needs near campus. Through extensive user research, including interviews and surveys, we gained insights into students' pain points and desires. This informed the development of our simple yet comprehensive solution, offering essential details like ratings, pictures, videos, and location specifics for each property. BruinRent's regular updates enable landlords to provide accurate information, ensuring students have access to the most relevant details. Our user research guided us in prioritizing features valuable to our target audience, tailoring the platform to their needs.
Key in Actions
Listing Review Page → Properties Page
I employed a comprehensive approach by utilizing qualitative data gathered through interviews to discern the preferences and desires of the user’s mental model, spanning across UCLA apartment owners, thereby ensuring representation of a broad spectrum of the intended audience.
User Research
“I would be very likely to use a website if it was geared specifically towards all UCLA students renting out apartments and subleasing and things like that.”
“I’d prefer a website to an app because I have no storage on my phone and for things like apartment looking.”
“I’d like to see user reviews and ratings.”
Based on my findings, I came up with new ideas for the website, including: users can specify criteria upon signing in, a customizable profile, and a map showing distances to UCLA; scrollable page with apartment details, reviews, and landlord profiles; detailed apartment info and in-app messaging with owners if feasible.
The Design Process
Bright and Youthful.
My partner and I worked with the marketing team to develop a set of colors and fonts that matched BruinRent’s target audience. We decided on bright blue to match UCLA colors, as well as the font Lato. We designed a couple different versions of the intro screen as seen on the right, eventually deciding on the simplest format it could take - a hero image with viewable apartments underneath so as to not make the user overwhelmed.
We were assigned the responsibility of creating the logo for BruinRent. After thorough deliberation, we explored numerous concepts before arriving at the decision to amalgamate a paw and a house, which I then designed on Illustrator. This combination was chosen due to its representation of the core objectives of BruinRent.
Graphic Design
The Logo
Graphic Design
The Hero Image
With the design almost finished, I was tasked with creating a graphic for the hero image that would replace the blue gradient we had previously kept. I thought that the gradient looked a little outdated, and a graphic with apartments and houses would better suit the bright and youthful concept our team decided on.
Updated Pages
Find Property Page
Edited for dev/user optimization. We made it easier for devs by removing the filter tab at the top. For users, we wanted to showcase more information in the same amount of space.
Home Page
Edited to showcase the new header image. Our team wanted darker text for more visibility.
Prior to my involvement with BruinRent, I had never engaged in website design, so I was nervous to start on this project as the lead designer. One huge challenge my partner and I ran into was text size: everything was almost 2x too large! We had to redesign every page to showcase the correct text and asset size.
While I had prior experience collaborating within teams, it paled in comparison to this team’s depth of involvement. It was a very extensive process - from coming up with a color guide to designing hundreds of pages and assets.
Witnessing the evolution of the designs created by my partner and me over a span of 7 months, resulting in an established website, was incredible to see - we now have 3000+ users and are currently getting acquired by Bruin Venture Group.
Everyone's diligent efforts played a pivotal role in shaping BruinRent into what it has become today. Endlessly grateful for this opportunity!
