Holiday home proof of concept
Role
UX Designer
Company
AND Digital
Client
Sykes Cottages
Year
2021
Since the pandemic, Sykes Cottages have identified a shortage in holiday homes. They also know that it can be time consuming and complicated for people to find and invest in new properties. Sykes saw a gap for a marketplace which listed properties and supported the buying & selling process, which would increase the number of properties available and provide new opportunities for Sykes to support.
Sykes asked the team at AND Digital to assist them in differing this from the likes of Rightmove and develop a concept to present to stakeholders. This was achieved through an interactive prototype.
Ideation
User Journey Mapping
To kickoff our workshop, we started with user journey mapping to understand how holiday properties were currently being bought and sold by Sykes' customers.
How Might We…?
As with any discovery, it was important to define the themes and insights of the product, and we did this through generating 'how might we...?' questions with our stakeholders.
Given the nature of the project, we had two voting colours: one for most important HMW, and the other for most unknown HMW. The ones that were most important were also easier for us as designers to work with, while the most unknown required more research from Sykes own internal team.
Research
User Interviews
Through in-depth user interviews, we identified four key points that would go on to inform Sykes' final proposition
The majority of people visited the location to view the home and the local amenities
There is currently no one to talk to about the buying process; people want to get advice from experts and the community
Rightmove is the go-to place to buy and search new holiday homes; unfortunately they only provide some of the necessary information
Many suggested having an advisor or an information hub around the actual letting and property management process to avoid making mistakes
Competitor Research
By comparing journeys for property buyers and sellers using existing property marketplaces, it helped us understand the different pathways and end goals of users.
We also researched other holiday-let providers to learn how they encouraged and guided their customers through the journey.
Design
Crazy 8’s
Once we had everything in place, we got the Sykes stakeholders involved with creating the initial design concepts for the AND team to expand on.
Design Library
As a team of three designers, we worked together in Figma, fleshing out a design library that would make the page-building much faster. It ensured consistency with Sykes Cottages' brand and it had the added effect of promoting communication to each other to check if components existed.
It was around this time that Figma's variants and interactive components were still quite new or in beta, but we leveraged it into our design library to really wow the Sykes' stakeholders at the end of the project.
Mockups
Key Takeaways
Technical vs Creative thinking
As someone with a technical background, I sometimes find it difficult separating the "how would this actually work, how can I make it work" mindset from the "conceptualise and explore" mindset, which led me to research further into Figma and Framer as tools. Thanks to my team's willingness to listen, I was able to demonstrate what I had learnt and is what led to the adoption of interactive components within our prototype, while in turn, they showed me how to utilise the skills to push experimenting further.
Joining Projects Midway
Despite joining the project late, I was able to get up to speed within the day, which meant I could start working on designs quickly. I found the best way was a mix of looking through research notes, any existing designs or wireframes, and having a few conversations with others on the team who had been on since the start.
Remote Designing
The pandemic has changed the way we work, and as someone who thrives off talking to people, being siloed to my house (and my cats) meant finding new ways to have those random conversations that reenergised me. It's not exactly the same, but I found that having just an open call with someone I was comfortable with meant that I could recreate the talking-out-loud-and-having-a-conversation atmosphere that I was used to. Having an open call also removed the need to message people constantly for feedback since I could just ask my virtual desk neighbour and get a quick response.
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