For this project, I created the desktop website design and the mobile design, as well as providing overall UX strategy and design consultation. The websites purpose is to provide a platform to digital nomads and travellers, who are looking for a longer-term accommodation anywhere in the world.

The I designed the desktop version with Sketch and the mobile version with Mockplus and Invision. You can view the Invision prototype below.

A Homeowner on Belooga recently said: "I wanted to compliment you for the Belooga site, it looks really really good. It's Clear, essential, simple. I have used it as an example to explain to my client the concept of 'user-friendly'"

Please view the live website here: www.belooga.co

Several necessary UX design steps where followed to ensure a well-thought of design that fulfils all user needs.

Mindmapping ensures that the problem is clear. In this stage, we discovered that there are three potential types of users: 1. the user that searched for a longer term accommodation (e.g. digital nomads, longer-term travelers), 2. users that add accommodations for the 'glory' (e.g. possibly also digital nomads) and 3. Real estate agencies or landlords looking for a different audience.

User Research is fundamental, as you need data to back up your assumptions, as well as discovering any other potential frustration the user might experience within the problem area. The results of our research via interviews with digital nomads, backed up our hypothesis that it is a pain-point for digital nomads/location independent professionals to find an accommodation for monthly rental. Most of the users use Airbnb as a platform, though this can be very expensive if you want to stay for a month and is more an option for short-term rental. Especially in Digital Nomad hotspots such as Thailand and Bali, digital nomads are forced to personally visit potential monthly accommodations, as there is currently no platform for finding monthly housing options.

The problem is even more severe in Europe, where there is only Airbnb for short-term accommodations, and other platforms (like Idealista in Spain and Portugal) are only viable options for rental periods of minimum 6 months, and often even 1 year.

Sketching kick starts the creative process and makes you think about different ways to visualise the user interface.

Prototyping & Wireframing ensures that your design is cleaner and more detailed, and you can start adding different features. For this project I used Mockplus to build the design and workflow of the Belooga mobile version and Sketch for the desktop design.

Usability Testing is essential to test how users will use your app and with those results you can fine tune your initial prototype before passing it to developing. For Belooga, we conducted usability tests with 5 users, to test onboarding as well as adding accommodations and searching for them. For the most part, it seemed that the wording wasn't very clear at some stages during the onboarding and there were a few obstacles that some users faced when filling out the 'add an accommodation' form. Furthermore, when searching the database for an accommodation, a few users had difficulties with the filter settings as there was no clear feedback given to the user.