RateMyRentals was a large term research, design, and application development project in order to provide a platform for students to crowdsource ratings for apartment buildings in the area to better supplement their needs as prospective renters. This project consisted of user research units with surveys, interviews, and evaluations, interface design units with ideation, wireframing, and protyping in high and low fidelity, and finally an implementation unit where we built the app in Java and performed a user testing suite.
Early stage wireframes implementing known mobile design conventions:
The first stage of the project was to do user research, and from there define key ideas, user touchpoints and desires, and implications for design from these aspects. We performed user research, and conducted interviews with selected participants to open code their responses into usable design features. These design features noted by users became the basis of our implications for design and further development.
Stage two was to carry forward the previous research and data forward to discern user goals and key design decisions. With all these aspects defined, we were able to move through several stages of prototyping and iteration. The final stage consisted of moving to a high fidelity working implementation written in Java, as well as performing user testing and further research. User testing included A/B testing, guided walkthroughs, user forums, and further interviews.
Final design prototype screenshots:
