Apartment Finder and Home Repairs

Cozy

Cozy is a company that offers property management services to independent landlords, property managers, and renters. Their service aims to make renting stress-free through a simple and secure process. Founded in 2012, Cozy offers services to thousands of cities nationally and in Puerto Rico.

Due to the company’s strong values, transparency, and intuitive system, I believe Cozy will be wildly successful. As such, I set out to design some concept apps that would align with the company’s growth.

Design Sprint /

Mobile App

Role /

UX Designer

Year /

2016

IDEATION

DESIGN

RESEARCH

Concept One: Cozy Apartment Finder

Currently, Cozy allows landlords to post direct links to their listings on any rental site and social site. When the link is clicked, a user is directed to Cozy’s website where they will complete rental applications, screenings, and background checks. Once a property is rented, tenants pay rent online through Cozy’s service.

Since this is mostly geared toward landlords seeking tenants, I created a concept app for a community of Cozy users to search for available properties:

I chose to do a competitive and comparative analysis of the Airbnb, Trulia and Apartment Finder apps to ideate well organized information architecture, intuitive search navigation, and easy-to-view property exploring features.

My goal was to conceptualize a design that would be search-friendly and easy to use while maximizing key features in a clean aesthetic.

Initial Wireframes

Landing Page

Search: Map View

Search: List View

Listing Detail

The Design

Concept Two: Cozy Home Repairs

In congruence with a developing community of tenants and landlords, I designed a concept app for Cozy property repairs. I aimed to create a platform where users could communicate clearly and foster positive relationships by maintaining records of repairs and upgrades over time.

For competitive/comparative analyses, I looked at the Tenant Repair Request, Maintenance Manager, Housters Property Management, and Buildium apps. I studied the information architecture of the apps and read customer reviews to create an engaging and intuitive design.

I sought to design an app where tenants could quickly and efficiently communicate with landlords to submit requests and schedule repairs, as well as to provide an organized database of past repairs and upgrades.

Initial Wireframes

Landing Page