About The Project

1. Context

The concept behind Rentmate came when John, the man behind this idea was having a hard time trying to find a nice place to live in Pretoria, South Africa. He had a bad experience with his previous roomie, he lived with some guy that was always partying, and John at that time was an MBA student with a small budget to barely pay the rent and having to deal with extreme noises and drunk people almost everyday.

2. The Challenge

Of course, everything went perfectly at the end. John found a way at that time to manage and endure his annoying roomie. After graduation, he came up with this idea of creating a product that could let people share their needs and find a perfect roomate that share the same interests in the short and long term, and that they could split overall expenses, so that no one had to go through his experience.

3. Insights

We started talking to some potential prospects, from students to people in their 40's so we could have a more broader scope about what are the housing needs of the people. For people with small budgets such as students or early professionals one of the most important things they care about when searching for a place to rent, is to look for someone else with whom they can split expenses such as rent, maintenance, general services, and the belief that what matters most is whom you live to be confident enough to call that new place, home.

4. The Solution

The concept we designed was a digital product that would let people sign in and share information about what their interests and expectations are in terms of where they would want to live and the kind of people they would like to share that place. Based on that information, the platform would select a list of places and people that are looking for the same kind of things, and recommend those to the user. After making a "match", the site would let them chat so they can schedule a meeting so that both parts could have some real talk, know each other and decide if they are willing to move in with each other.

After making just enough research and concept testing with users, the product concept was selected to be presented to business incubators in South Africa.

6. Lessons Learnt From Project

Identifying the best color combination to use on the prototypes was a big challenge. We wanted something warm and at the sametime appealing so folks coming on the platform can almost immediately get comfortable to start using. The way we finally got the color to use was by doing extensive research on competitors to try understand their color choices.

After doing that, I had to illustrate the landing page prototype with 4 different color combinations and place infront of potential users. We got a lot of people say the wine and orange implemented makes them feel warm and safe about the landing page.

I also learnt the power of being really patient and not think of how what the prototype could eventually look like but rather trust the research process.