PROJECT BRIEF
We proposed and a redesigned affordable housing website with more meaningful content to keep homeowners informed and engaged, and a financial calculator that gives them an idea of their cost and financial commitment to owning ADUs.
Product Status: Design solution provided
Duration: Feb 2020- Dec 2020, 10 months
Design team: Vanessa Hu, Mahesh Kentheti, Mia Zhang, Ximeng Huang
SOUP is a nonprofit aiming to provide affordable housing services in East Palo Alto. It offers free project management services for building an ADU to low-income homeowners.
COMPANY OVERVIEW
Field research & interview
We interviewed 12 EPA residents and two ADU experts to explore their thoughts on getting an ADU.
We also visited our partner in person and got a better understanding of what ADU looks like and how it functions.
RESEARCH
Find out the tensions
Affordable housing is not a new thing to us, but ADU was a brand new term to all of our team members. Thus, the first step for us was a lot of conversations with the stakeholders in this ecosystem.
Mission-driven
Present Soup’s mission and its capability of helping residents of East Palo Alto
Cost upfront
Show ADU estimate upfront to help people better understand how much it's going to cost
Provide concise and
up-to-date information for homeowners to make informed decision
Information-centric
Accessory Dwelling Units
for relieving the housing crisis.
Provide affordable housing units to renters and help homeowners with financing and building ADUs.
PROBLEM
Housing crisis in the Bay Area
In the Bay Area, there is a serious problem with the high cost of living. Housing cost burdens fall most heavily on low-income households.
SUCCESS METRICS
Increased business cooperation with stakeholders within half a year
Increased new ADU ownership within one quarter
Increased participants in ADU communities with a month
Increased inquiries from homeowners within a month
SOUP'S SOLUTION
ADU (accessory dwelling units)
ADU is a secondary housing unit in the backyard on a residential lot. ADU’s intend to supplement household incomes through the rent earned and serve as an affordable housing option to those in need.
Once the unit is built, the same can be leased out at an 80% market rate, making it a win-win for homeowners who can get a supplemental income, and help renters find an affordable space.
WHO IT'S FOR
Low-income homeowners
Soup's target audience are low-income homeowners who are looking for an extra source of income or places to live.
I’ve had a fixed income for years and am approaching retirement. How am I supposed to get an extra source of income to sustain myself?
"
Prior to Covid I commuted to work daily and always wanted to live near my workplace, but at my salary, that’s out of the question.
"
MEET PENELOPE AND SANDRA
What they are experiencing?
01
DESIGN HIGHLIGHTS
Hero's journey
Success stories can be powerful to help users relate to their situations.
02
The simplified process of owning an ADU helps homeowners to understand how long it's going to take.
ADU Timeline
It's not the end
Want to see how we approach the final solution?
Here it is!
DESIGN SOLUTION (VIDEO)
We proposed and designed a new website with more meaningful content to keep audiences informed and engaged, and a financial calculator that gives homeowners an idea of their cost and financial commitment.
How Penelope interacts with the new website
Click play button to watch
03
Clear estimated income
We divided the inputs and outputs into two sections in order to make it clear to users in terms of where to enter information and where to see the numbers.
04
To encourage users to try the calculation feature, we added the call to action buttons with various names to grab their attention.
Proper call-to-action
JOURNEY MAP
Empathize our target audience
As we precisely defined the journey map, we found two low points where the design opportunities could come in.
We made a tablet-based prototype and a web-based prototype with different flows to test both on the input methods and user experience. We reached out to 4 homeowners in the Bay Area to compare these two variations and see which variant drives more conversion.
PROTOTYPING & A/B TESTING
It's a tablet-based version.
Prototype A
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Home address
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ADU type
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down payment
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length of load
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credit score
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interest rate
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Each ADU type description
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monthly payment
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monthly net income
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annual gross income
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the annualized rate of return
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mortgage providers
Inputs
Outputs
ITERATION
Through A/B testing, we noticed that people prefer using the web-based version in general. More importantly, there's a need to step back and decide what inputs and outputs should be there in the calculator. To figure that out, we conducted a co-design session with our partners.
From codesign to decision making
We listed out all the components and moved them into the proper section along with our partner. The final decisions are as followed.
IDEATION
We sorted all the notes we've taken during the research and raised HMW questions as much as we could. To each HMW question, we ideated possible solutions. Then we evaluated possible solutions by considering two dimensions - impact and feasibility.
Solution evaluation
HMW questions list
Solution evaluation
It's a web-based version.
Prototype B
Here are three key design principles that we applied to address opportunity areas.
DESIGN PRINCIPLES
Step back and step ahead
Finding our target audience to test our design was not easy. Ideally, we test low-income homeowners in EPA for getting immediate feedback. We asked friends of friends, reached out to 'perfect tester' as much as we could. It was time-consuming and slowed our pace to the next step. We realized that we could also test those homeowners in other areas due to some main concerns were mostly the same. Then we shifted our strategy of user-testing and wisely used our time to step ahead as we planned.
SUPPORTING DATA
In East Palo Alto, the median monthly household income is around $5000, but the average rent is nearly $3000, which accounts for more than half of the income.
STAKEHOLDER MAP
Understand the system
To better understand how the system function, I created the stakeholder map to illustrate how all the people are connected.
What happens now
IDEAL RESULTS
Penelope eventually gets an ADU and is about to lease it out. She posts it in various EPA groups.
A few weeks later, Sandra is in the neighborhood, and she sees this flyer at the EPACANDO office and thinks that the units look modern. Soon after, Sandra contacts Penelope.
Penelope shows Sandra around the ADU. Things start moving forward, and within a few months, Sandra moves into Penelope’s brand new unit.
We hope that our project and solutions can be beneficial to homeowners like Penelope, renters like Sandra, and more communities like East Palo Alto.
What works
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ADU types are easy to understand
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Each components are well organized
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Don't know what to expect on the right section at the beginning
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Not clear what numbers are generated
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Net income should be the focus on the screen while it's relatively small
User testing feedback
What doesn't work
What doesn't work
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The net income should be placed on top.
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A bit confused about the last screen showing two questions on the left-hand side
What works
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Useful to have the flood zone and upzone explained
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Helpful to check the home address and see if homeowners are eligible for getting an ADU
User testing feedback
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Research
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Storyboard
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Prototyping
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User-testing
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Wireframing
MY ROLE
How might we help homeowners to make more informed decisions on building an ADU in their backyard?
As Penelope browses online, she finds that the information she gets from multiple sources very overwhelming.
However, a friend who works with local non-profit EPACANDO tells her about SOUP, and she is hopeful when she hears about it for the first time.
But after going through the website and details, she is not sure if the service is feasible at her income level.
Up next
Survey
We sent the survey to the EPA groups and ADU groups on Facebook and Nextdoor and got 75 responses in total.
"This is excellent work and does a great job of articulating much of what we are hoping to do with Soup as it relates to ADUs. "
----Founder of Soup
FEEDBACK
What people's reactions to our designs
We've got a lot of positive feedback when we were pitching in the community. As we reported the proposed solution to our partner, they showed a strong interest in the solution and decided to implement it.
Good relationship with our partner
It took our team 10 months to deep dive into the project and keep iterating our design concept. Within these 10 months, we communicated with our partner on a bi-weekly basis, which is extremely helpful to ensure we stayed on the right track.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Why aren't people signing up?
After researching with a whole lot of people, our findings reveal that people are staying away from this opportunity due to the following reasons.
CHALLENGE
01
Uncertainty
Uncertainty of the cost and financial option
"I'm not sure if I’m financially able. I just need to learn more about it, to find out if it is something at all possible."
“I get stuck because I don't know what applies to me."
"Every time I call, they (city planning department ) refer me to their website, but it's a lot to read. "
02
Limited knowledge
The limited knowledge about the policy and their eligibility for building an ADU
03
Overwhelming info
The sources they can refer to seem too complicated to them
