How would you design a product for moving cities? [Product Design Question]

Photo by Ján Jakub Naništa on Unsplash

Interviewer: How would you design a product for moving cities?

Shailesh: Okay, as I understand the problem, moving cities means people are moving into a different city for a long period, like recent graduates joining the company.
Interviewer: Yes

Shailesh: Okay, before moving on to the solution, I have some questions that I want to clarify. When we are thinking of designing products for people moving into the new cities, what is our prime focus? There are a lot of use cases like searching for a home, information about necessary services like schools, hospitals, etc. It can be entertainment like socialising with others. According to my standpoint, house hunting is the first thing we look out for, so we can target that; what do you think?
Interviewer: Yeah, absolutely, that’s the first thing we look out for. Go ahead.

Shailesh: Also, I am assuming that we are the platform that is facilitating both the parties, the ones who are listing the houses on the platform and the ones who are seeking the houses on the platform.
Interviewer: That’s a fair assumption.

Shailesh: Alright, one more question, is there any resource or time constraint I should be aware of? I am asking this question because it may play an important role while prioritizing the feature and forming a product roadmap and deliverables.
Interviewer: Let’s say we have to deliver this product in the next 6–9 months.

Shailesh: Let me form a product goal; the goal of the problem is to design a product that will improve the house hunting experience while moving into a new city.
Interviewer: Yeah, go ahead.

Shailesh: The way I would like to approach this problem is, first will see our customer segment and their user journey and, depending on that, will see some of the pain points. After prioritizing the pain points, we can see some potential solutions in priority and corresponding success metrics. Last we can think of some of the potential tradeoffs or future aspects of the solution. Sounds okay?
Interviewer: Sounds great.

Customer Segments/ Persona

Shailesh: We can have different user segments, but if I have to state the user segment in a MECE(Mutually Exclusive & Collectively Exhaustive) way, then I will look into these segments.

1. Recent graduates: They are the ones who have just graduated from college, and they need to join a company that is in the new city. They are open to shared accommodation, and since they have just started working, their priority is to get a not so costly accommodation.
2. Families: They are the ones who are looking for a safe apartment for rent, and their priority is convivence and safety for their kids rather than money.
3. Retired people: People who have been serving the government and have a government apartment but now they have retired, they want to have an apartment in which they can spend the rest of their lives. Because they are the ones for whom socializing is very important, they want that kind of apartment.
4. People who want to lease their apartment on rent agreement, PG owners etc.

Shailesh: All the customer segments are interesting; those I would like to focus on are the ones who recently graduated. This has a great total addressable market, and also it is the segment with which I can personally relate as well. What do you think?
Interviewer: Yes, this can be a potential target segment. Go ahead.

Shailesh: Let me state the overall board journey of the customer segment so that we can have a great list of the pain points of the customer segment.

User Journey

1. Decide on the locality depending on the different amenities.
2. Check out the houses, their prices and other facilities.
3. After finalizing the house, they complete the formalities of the rent agreement.
4. After moving into the house, the initial setup requirement is there or the room decor requirement is.

Pain Points

So now, depending on the user journey, let me think of the potential pain points:

1. Deciding on the locality depending on your preference is a real pain. There is always a tradeoff between deciding the locality. Let’s say there are multiple layouts or localities near a tech park where our office is, so we need to decide between different tradeoffs like price, is it close to the main road so that I can find accommodation to the office or should I go for the accommodation that is a bit deep inside the locality so that I will be away from the all the pollution on main road and vehicles noise, are all the facilities available nearby etc.? Choosing area is a real pain.
2. After choosing the area, choosing the house or society is the real headache because we need to talk to so many people like flatmates and owners, shortlisting it and seeing if the house is clean or not, or if it is big enough, Seeing pictures, reviews etc., are time-consuming.
3. Negotiating with the house owner is also very daunting; people who are just coming out of college may not have the required bargaining skill, so they may feel looted after moving into the house regarding the rent or the security deposits.
4. Completing all the formalities in the societies, getting a rent agreement formed is also frustrating.
5. Setting up the house and getting to know the essential things such as the supermarket, hospitals, and medical shops is also sometimes painful. Some people want to have some kind of décor.

Shailesh: Until now, we have discussed that we want to have one product that makes the house hunting experience very comfortable for the people moving to the new city. Then we discussed the target segment and their pain points. I will pause for a while if you have any questions regarding this.
Interviewer: I think it looks good.

Prioritization of Pain Points

Shailesh: Okay, now let me prioritize the pain points depending on the intensity of grievance, or we can also think of the frequency of pain points if that is applicable here. So that we have looked to the complete breadth and depth of the pain points, is that okay?
Interviewer: Yeah, that will be good.

Shailesh: I think getting to know about the essential things, supermarkets etc., is something that Google has done over several years, and they are doing a fabulous job in this. People are also kind of accompanied with using Google in this. People are also aware of the documents needed rental rent agreement, and in many cases, the owner is the one who agrees. The pain point #1 and #2 are still a big problem because, as a person, I would want to live in the locality or house that suits my preference. So should I go ahead and put the solution for problems #1 and #2.
Interviewer: Yes

Solutions/Features

Solutions to Pain points #1

1. We can have one solution in which the person can search for the preferred area or the office address since many people would want to stay close to their office and the budget. The search result will include all the best localities; the search result will also be assisted by the different filter/sorting options like distance, budget etc. There will also be some of the top qualities like 4–5 hypermarket, Nearest bus stop etc. Depending on it, the user will judge which society he will want to deep dive into.
2. We can have an AI voice assistant to which you can talk out all our requirements, budget, need areas, and it will automatically list out the best result for you according to your preference. We can use collaborative filtering for these features depending on the past preferences of some other people.
3. We can have premium features like “Ask Expert,” where you can talk with our expert and get 1–1 consulting and complete end to end house hunting journey and solutions to hidden problems and nuances etc.

The solution to Pain Points #2

1. We can have a feature in which you will be given a list of results and houses that you filter sort depending on your preference after you have decided the locality. I will have the contact number of the people living there, the contact number of the house owner, amenities like clubhouse, initial setup etc. It will also be assisted with pictures and authentic reviews about the society or house. We can allow our normal users to have one free contact, but the premium customer can have 30 contacts for three months. From contacts, I mean the contact of owner, flatmates etc.
2. We can have an AR feature in which a person can inspect the complete house without going there. This will help to build trust among the house seekers. They will be able to check out on their own the size of the rooms, amenities, facilities etc.

Prioritization

For MVP, by which we are testing out the hypothesis, we can go with features #1 or #3 for pain point #1. And for pain point #2, we can have the solution that is #1. We can have advanced features on our future roadmap once we have tested the hypothesis and gauged the initial market sentiments about our offerings. Is that okay?
Interviewer: yes, that’s good.

Success Metrics

Shailesh: Now, let’s look at the success metrics that I want to track.

1. No. of installs/ Downloads of our application.
2. Average number of search queries for the areas and the houses per day.
3. Average number of listing of houses by owners per week.
4. No. of people opt for the premium feature out of the total number of people who have downloaded it.

-- Technomanagers