The foundations

Through an initial context analysis, we establish two fundamental pillars on which to build our project:

Communication

Residential communities rely on communication to live in harmony.
The key elements are:

  • socialization
  • Conflict resolution
  • Cooperation

Motivation

Motivation is essential to engage residents. We should incorporate behavioral design patterns such as:

  • Gamification

  • Goal-setting

  • Cooperation

The process

To create a product that effectively meets user needs, this project is based on User-Centered Design (UCD) methodologies. It focuses on designing with and for the end user, actively involving them through various research techniques at every stage of the process.

Insights

In this first analysis phase, we will carry out exploratory research to understand the user, their needs, and their context. The goal of the analysis phase is to extract new insights and functionalities that we can later bring into the design phase.

Due to the great disparity among residential communities, we have focused on interviews as a qualitative analysis method, and surveys as a quantitative methodology to triangulate the results.

About Communication

  • Bigger residential buildings have a greater need for digital tools
  • Small communities tend to communicate more face-to-face

About Collaboration

  • There are more proactive neighbors who emerge as leaders

  • The majority of neighbors want to participate and stay informed

About Meetings

  • They attend meetings when they are interested in the topic

  • By not attending, they miss important issues.

  • Meetings tend to be long or tedious.

About the process

  • Solving a problem can be long and complex:

1 The neighbor notifies the president.

2 The president filters and contact the administrator.

3 The administrator gets in touch with the contractor.

4 The contractor goes to the community to fix the issue

5 Once resolved, the contractor inform the administrator

6 The administrator inform the president the problem is solved

About the functionalities

The most requested functionalities will be part of our MVP

Customer Journey

Once we have identified and gathered enough data about our users and their context, we proceed to structure and shape this information using various techniques.

User Personas will allow us to profile the archetypes of the different types of users who will interact with our product, while the Customer Journey will help us identify user behavior across all stages of product usage.

User flow

Flow diagrams allow us to organize the ideas and screens needed for our prototype, clearly and systematically presenting the elements and functionalities of our app. These flows define each step the user can take within the app to achieve their goals.

In this user flow, we can see that different functionalities exist depending on the type of user profile:

  • If you are a resident, you can: Report an incident or Submit a complaint.
  • If you are a president or administrator, you can: Manage requests, Send a notice to residents, or Schedule a meeting.

Prototype

The construction of a prototype involves the visual design of the product so that it can be tested by users before development. As we design the interface, we will create components and patterns that will be repeated throughout the application, forming a design system and making it much more consistent.

Below, all the functionalities developed in the prototype are presented.