“What am I missing?”
Rent, amenities, commute, and neighborhood information can be difficult to piece together across platforms.
DOORMATE / UX CASE STUDY
A new city.
Fewer rental surprises.
Helping Boston students explore housing, understand the details, and learn from the people who lived there before them.
Explore the neighborhood. Look closer. Hear from tenants.
01 / THE CHALLENGE
Finding a home shouldn’t
mean going in blind.
Moving to Boston puts students in an unfamiliar rental market. Listings are scattered, budgets are tight, and important details can surface only after moving in.
“I wish I’d known.”
Cleanliness, maintenance, and landlord responsiveness can change how a place feels to live in.
Illustrative prompts based on the project’s problem framing, not direct interview quotations.
02 / LISTEN BEFORE DESIGNING
The search is about more
than the monthly rent.
The project used student surveys and interviews, alongside conversations with people in real estate and hospitality. Personas, a journey map, and affinity mapping organized the needs that emerged.
What does the rent buy?
Students weighed the cost against amenities, maintenance, and the quality of landlord service.
Close enough, affordable enough.
Commute, quiet, social opportunities, and price created trade-offs that a listing alone couldn’t settle.
The details matter.
Accurate information and candid tenant reviews could help surface issues before a commitment.
Qualitative themes summarized from the deck. Participant counts and measured usability outcomes were not reported.
THE DESIGN QUESTION
How might students learn what living there is really like?
Bring property details, location context, and tenant experiences into one place so the search supports comparison rather than guesswork.
03 / MAKE THE JOURNEY TANGIBLE
From scattered information
to a connected path.
Browse homes→Explore the map→Read the details→Learn from reviews
Original solution sketches from the project.
04 / THE EXPERIENCE
A closer look.
Before moving in.
A / FIND YOUR BEARINGSSee the home.
See the home.
See where it fits.
Gallery and map views offer different ways to explore housing. Search and filters help narrow the options around what matters to the student.
Cognition lens: the map makes location relationships visible, while listing cards give people a consistent way to compare options.
B / LOOK BEYOND THE PHOTOSBring the important
Bring the important
details together.
Property pages combine images, price, location, bedrooms, amenities, and tenant reviews. The goal is to reduce the need to piece a picture together elsewhere.
Cognition lens: keeping related information together can support comparison without relying on memory.
Explore the full property screen ↗C / PASS THE KNOWLEDGE ONMake lived experience
Make lived experience
part of the search.
A review form combines ratings and written feedback, with an option to remain anonymous. Tenant perspectives add context that property descriptions may leave out.
Question to test: what would help students trust a review while protecting a contributor’s privacy?
05 / VISUAL LANGUAGE
Rooted in
Boston Green.
A door-inspired identity, green accents, and soft neutrals give Doormate its own visual language. Cerebri Bold and Lato form the original type palette.
Boston Green#008853
Dark Green#003920
Light Green#D8F4E9
Soft Neutral#F2F0F2
06 / REFLECTION & NEXT STEPS
Trust is something
to build—and test.
Doormate turns the research themes into a housing and reviews concept. The next step is to test whether students can compare homes, find relevant details, and judge the usefulness of reviews.
Test the essentials
Observe students finding a home within a budget and identifying the details they need before enquiring.
Strengthen trust
Explore review verification, moderation, and privacy before treating a review system as trustworthy.
Explore what’s next
The deck proposes virtual tours, scam detection, richer profiles, and chat as future directions—not existing features.