Adding a social flavor to a Transaction Platform
P.G Hostel where inmates stay on monthly rental. The company will add more facilities in Hyderabad and other metro cities.
Current tenants profile
These tenants are employees working in I.T companies in Hitech City/ Gachibowli, away from their hometown. They all earn more than 50,000 per month, spend 10,000 to 20,000 per month on premium accommodation, food & travel. They are all interested in lively accommodation than a typical single sharing hostel room.These guys carry high end smartphone. They use smartphone apps to interact with friends, family members, order food, book transport, make financial transactions, entertainment and check work related mails & messages.
Mobile App
The facility should have features to inmates will be able to pay monthly rent, view payment info, book extra services like laundry, room cleaning. As of now only the current inmates will have active accounts in the mobile app. Once somebody vacates the room, his account will be suspended. When a new inmate comes in his account will be created.The same mobile app also has various IOT integrations (provided smartphone hardware supports the feature). They will be unlock the room door, alexa integration, tv, a.c operation remote etc. A complaint can be raised by taking a photo with the smartphone camera.
The company which operates this high end stay wants to convert the mobile app from Transaction only Platform to a more engaging Platform. Existing inmates will be able to find similar interest guests residing in the same hostel building. A small group of people should be able to plan and watch a football match in common room. Or plan for an outing. Or hangout for a chat once everyone is back to hostel in the evening.
The same platform can be opened for up residents of nearby hostels less then 1 km radius, where they can pay and use the common facilities like swimming pool, badminton court, gym etc. When there is a flow of new people coming to use shared facilities there will be constant inflow of new people to connect with inmates. The social graph will be expanded to people of similar interests nearby.
Another approach is to open up the platform for old & prospective inmates also. I.e old inmates will never lose the platform account (with less privileges) and prospective inmates can get a glimpse of all the features & network the hostel provides. This will further open the social graph with extra users for existing inmates to connect.
The research component of this project was anchored in a variety of sources. On one hand there were data analytics(data I gathered from several sources available online), but also user reviews and ratings, understanding customer satisfaction, competitive analysis and doing some functional user testing. This exercise was mostly focused on search functionality, and not so much on development of a personalization experience which would present within the profile aspect of the application.
I followed Human-Centered Design method to make sure our design decisions solve the real core challenges in the Web and Mobile Application.
I'm looking for a full time UX Designer position, worldwide.
