The House is Only Half of It
I lead a layered team of eight designers and researchers in redefining the Trulia experience to reflect our new brand positioning: The House is Only Half of It
Role: Sr. Design Manager
Trulia
The three most important factors in determining
a property's desirability: location, location, location
In the Spring of 2016, Trulia was swimming in a Red Ocean of competitors along with their tech real-estate marketplace competitors. In order to differentiate themselves, Trulia needed a unique and ownable product strategy.
Old adages and research with home owners and renters all reinforced what we all intrinsically know is true about real estate - location is everything. For many the neighborhood is just as, if not more important when searching for a new home. Research uncovered multiple workarounds seekers would use - like arriving early to an open house in order to walk around the neighborhood - in order to get a sense of “the vibe.”
We realized bringing that experience - expressing the “neighborhood vibe” in a digital environment - could be our strategic differentiator.
Key Goals:
Infuse the existing product experience with neighborhood information
Create new, innovative features that bring the neighborhood brand positioning to life within the product experience
What makes up the “Neighborhood Vibe”?
A key early insight from research indicated that users were hungry to understand the “vibe” of a neighborhood, and that they often physically would go to the neighborhood and spend time there to understand these seemingly intangible characteristics of a neighborhood. In order to understand what exactly contributed to the vibe, the team launched a research program to understand how to translate the vibe of a neighborhood online.
A key component of the research was for research participants (who were either looking for a home to buy or rent) write a goodbye letter to their current neighborhood, and a love letter to their new neighborhood.
Insights from this study became the inspiration for several new features.
“Once a Mission girl, always a Mission girl …“ ~ Ivonne
Building the Neighborhood Vibe
Who better to tell you about a neighborhood than the people who live there? A widely known customer segment at Trulia who we rarely designed for was a group of users we called the “Looky Loos.” Looky Loos routinely used Trulia to sleuth information on for sale and off market homes in their neighborhood.
The team created a mechanism to gather user-generated neighborhood content from our “Looky-Loo” customer segment - but also built in moderation to ensure that any user-generated content that would ensure any and all content published would support the Fair Housing Act of 1968.
Neighborhood
Vision Video
In order to help all Trulians understand (and get inspired by) the future vision of the product, the product and research team created a 3-minute animated video to explain the key features that would bring a neighborhood focused home search experience to life for a user.
Link to Vimeo Video
Password: ainarubies2019
