BACKGROUND
This project was the redesign of the back-end 'Advertiser' portion of the real estate site, where individuals or companies would be posting their listings for sale/rent. The goal was to increase ease-of-use and ultimately numbers and quality of listings. This project was a follow-up to a very successful redesign of the Zap Imoveis consumer-facing portion of the site performed by a colleague of mine.
At the time of this project I was living in Abu Dhabi, U.A.E. with a project team in Seattle, WA and a client in Sao Paulo, Brazil.
All client communication was done over Skype/Gotomeeting and email. The format and content of the usability testing was developed by me and then translated and performed by a localally-engaged firm in Sao Paulo. I virtually sat-in for some of the testing and received videos very shortly after each session. Sessions were live-translated in to English so I could understand what was happening.
WIREFRAMES AND TESTING
Unlike other recent projects, there was an already established stylebased on the recently produced work so we skipped any sketching and proceeded directly with Wireframing a solution. Pre-testing there were 15 iterations of the wireframe document produced, which occured over several weeks and with mulitple internal team and client meetings for review. Once a solution was felt to be test-worthy, a testing plan was created and all documentation was handed over to be translated for the Usabiltity Testing. This testing was performed against click-through static prototypes of teh wireframes.
Below is just one example of some feedback the was derived from the testing and an example of how the Individual Advertiser page changed post-testing.
DETAILS
Within such a large form-based project there are lots of details that need to be uncovered and addressed. Some examples of this are found below with an examination of the Property Type Taxonomy, Listing Performance, and Initial/empty states for select pages. For any single page in the 'Create and Advertisement' workflow there was an average of 5 follow-up pages that document details and interactions on that single page, validation for example.
MULTIPLE AUDIENCES
In addition to Individuals trying to sell or rent their property, the site also delivers a lot of homes for sale/rent by agencies which can be as small as single-owner operations to large 30+ operations, and developers.
Each of these groups was interviewed to determine how they use the site, could best use the site, and any special needs/requirements/restrictions.
ANNOTATIONS
Unlike other projects, the annotations were applied to the final designs in order to create a style-guide that the client would later use for development and ongoing maintenance. Visual design was performed by the design team in Seattle. Annotating the final designs was my last deliverable for the project.
