Apartments.com Favorites Experience
Designing a streamlined and collaborative experience for renters
Role
Product Design Intern
Team
3 designers, 1 manager
Timeline
10 weeks
Overview
The mobile Favorites experience doesn’t support modern-day apartment hunting.
As a Product Design Intern at Apartments.com in Atlanta, GA, I was tasked with improving the Favorites experience. A key feature renters use to save, organize, and revisit apartment listings.
This included rethinking how users add favorites, navigate to the Favorites page, and interact with their saved listings.
solution
👀 Want a sneek peak?
Empathizing
I wanted to see the pain points first-hand, so I tried the experience myself!
Key Insight
I began by jotting down gaps within the experience that made me feel frustrated, unfulfilled, or any missed opportunities by going through the end-to-end experience. All the way from liking a listing, trying to share a specific listing, and finding the page. Through this, I was better able to understand both the product, the flow, and the user.
PAIN POINTS
The current experience was extremely frustrating.
Static
Users expected a confirmation, or output. This led to lack of trust and poor UX.
Hard To Find
Around 80% of users dropped off, felt frustrated, or had mild confusions finding the ‘Favorites’ page.
Unorganized
There’s no way to differentiate between listings saved a week or months ago, nor does the experience support collaboration.
FINDINGS
The data shows that the ‘Favorites’ feature acted as a decision-making tool for renters.
Sharing
Planning
Feedback
A/B Testing
I tested where to place the ‘Favorites’ page for ease of access.
Users performed better with the exposed line item, but most preferred the pill filter; this mismatch signaled a need for even further iteration.
77% success rate
61% success rates
High mis-click rates! Both iterations had users struggling, were we saw 61% success rates for the pill filter, and 77% success rate for the line item. This still did not dramatically increase the already poor experience.
After looking at our [CoStar’s] other network sites such as ForRent network, and experiences like Airbnb and Zillow, one thing I noticed was that the ‘Favorites’ page was accessible across screens. Also, since users performed better on the line item iteration, having the ‘Favorites’ easily discoverable and global was needed.
KEY FEATURES
Toast Notifications to close the feedback loop.
Users expected confirmation after liking the listing. Thus, toast notifications do exactly that - increasing the trust with the product and the user.
Lists turn apartment hunting into a shared experience.
Lists replaced the copy-paste chaos of sharing links, and now support multiple searches at once, so organizing your hunt is as easy as collaborating on it.
Global access to the Favorites page reduced user friction during the experience.
Favorites needed to be found, not searched for. By giving it a global, one-click home instead of tucking it into a flow, we kept UI disruption minimal while making the feature immediately discoverable.
Notes turned scattered texts into shared decisions.
By keeping notes native to the list, users no longer had to rely on texts or group chats to explain their reasoning. Keeping decision-making context inside the product made the app the single source of truth for the search.
This meant less mental juggling when comparing many apartments.
Shareable lists made apartment-hunting more efficient.
A shareable list replaced the tedious process of copying and pasting multiple URLs, making collaboration effortless.
OUTCOME
Presented to the VP of Product, Design Manager, and Lead Designer of Apartments.com
My vision wouldn’t have been possible without an amazing team. Elaine, Eugene, Andre’: for answering all my questions and Teams messages. Sarina: for being an awesome buddy. Bill and Kassidy: for leading and mentoring us with care.
Reflection
My learnings after a creative (& humid) Atlanta summer.
Ask for constraints, not just feedback
Be an innovator!