Prototyping and Usability Evaluation
Lease Ease —
Usability Evaluation
and Prototype Redesign
A university housing and roommate matching application designed for students navigating the apartment search process. The project involved Figma prototype development, scenario-based usability testing with four participants, and an iterative redesign informed by direct user feedback.
4
Usability test participants, one per team member
17 min
Average time to complete all task scenarios
100%
Task completion rate across all participants
5
Redesign changes implemented post-testing
Overview
What is Lease Ease?
Lease Ease is a mobile application designed to help university students find suitable accommodation and compatible roommates near their campus. The application addresses a gap in existing rental platforms, which tend to prioritize general users over the specific needs of students navigating an unfamiliar city for the first time.
The application's core features include a preference-based survey that generates personalized accommodation recommendations, a roommate matching system with profile browsing, a connection request flow, and a property listing view with amenity details and commute distances.
This case study focuses on the usability evaluation phase: how the team tested the Figma prototype with real participants, synthesized the feedback, and implemented five targeted redesign changes to improve the application's usability and functionality.
Problem Space
The student housing challenge
Students relocating to a new city for university face a compound problem: finding affordable housing in an unfamiliar area while simultaneously identifying compatible roommates. Existing platforms like Zillow and Apartments.com are designed for a general audience and do not account for the specific constraints of student life, such as proximity to campus, budget ranges tied to financial aid cycles, or the social dynamics of shared student housing.
Many users, who had prior experience with applications like Zillow and Apartments.com, appreciated our focus on user empathy. They particularly valued our comprehensive questionnaire and personalized recommendations, which they found to be missing in other applications.
Results Summary — User Feedback
The team developed two personas to guide the design: Tripthi, a student with limited support who required more guidance through the process, and Priya, a student with family support who was more familiar with the search process. Due to participant availability constraints, usability testing focused on the Tripthi scenario, which represented the higher-need use case.
Research Approach
How we tested
The team conducted four individual usability tests, each performed by a different team member with a participant recruited from prior contextual inquiry work. This recruitment approach ensured participants had real-world experience with apartment search tools and could provide grounded, contextually relevant feedback.
The prototype was built in Figma and shared via link, making it accessible on participants' smartphones and allowing for a more natural interaction pattern during testing. The team transitioned from an initial Balsamiq prototype to Figma specifically to support this testing method.
Informed Consent
Each participant received a consent form explaining the study purpose, voluntary participation, and data confidentiality before the session began.
Scenario Introduction
Participants were given a realistic scenario framing them as a student searching for accommodation, grounding their tasks in a meaningful context rather than abstract instructions.
Think-Aloud Task Completion
Participants completed nine task scenarios covering login, profile setup, the accommodation survey, search, property details, roommate connection, notifications, profile viewing, and profile editing while verbalizing their thought process.
Post-Task Questionnaire
After each scenario, participants answered targeted questions about clarity, ease of use, and what additional information they expected. Five follow-up questions covered overall usability, design, feature requests, user experience, and satisfaction.
Data Synthesis and Redesign
The team consolidated findings across all four sessions, identified patterns in the feedback, and agreed on five changes to implement in the prototype before final submission.
Key Findings
What users told us
Overall, users responded positively to the application. The terms "user friendly," "straightforward," "easy to comprehend," and "organized" appeared across all four test sessions. The dashboard and match percentage feature were consistently highlighted as standout design decisions. No participant failed to complete any task. However, five clear patterns emerged that pointed to specific, addressable usability gaps.
Login lacked university integration
All four participants noted the login process was straightforward, but multiple users raised the same concern: they preferred not to share a personal email address and expected the option to authenticate using their DePaul university credentials.
Survey tone created friction
The phrase "I know it's tiring" on the survey page was intended to be empathetic but landed as demotivating. Users interpreted it as confirmation that the task was burdensome rather than as reassurance. The survey itself was well-structured but the framing undermined user confidence mid-task.
Property proximity was ambiguous
Users found it difficult to evaluate how far a listed property was from their university using text-only commute distances. Multiple participants independently requested a map view to visualize the property location and neighborhood before making a decision.
No mechanism for property reviews
Participants with prior rental experience wanted to read reviews from previous tenants before shortlisting a property. The absence of any rating or review system for listings made the decision-making process feel incomplete. Users also wanted the ability to leave their own reviews.
Notification system lacked hierarchy
The notification panel mixed connection requests and messages in a single view. Users found this cluttered and suggested separating the two types. They also noted that the accept and reject icons were the same color, which violated a basic visual feedback convention.
Roommate profiles needed more depth
Users wanted richer information before sending a connection request, including dietary preferences, academic program, and hobby icons rather than text. Several also noted that the accept/decline buttons on the profile view were misplaced and should only appear in the notification context.
Usability ratings across participants
| Participant | Usability Score (out of 10) | Key positive | Primary concern |
|---|---|---|---|
| Participant 1 (Mehak) | 8 / 10 | Intuitive navigation, clean design | Needed more guidance on profile photo upload |
| Participant 2 (Godwin) | 8.5 / 10 | Match percentage, dashboard layout | Icons lacked sufficient spacing and context |
| Participant 3 (Ashish) | 9 / 10 | User-friendly, efficient feature set | Notification section cramped |
| Participant 4 (Abdullah) | 9 / 10 | Layout clear and easy to follow | Pages felt sparse, needed richer content |
Redesign Decisions
Five changes, one iteration
Following the usability sessions, the team consolidated all findings and prioritized five changes for implementation in the prototype. Each change maps directly to a pattern observed across multiple participants, ensuring the redesign was evidence-based rather than assumption-led.
Star ratings added to property listings
Property listing pages now display a five-star rating alongside the existing price, occupancy, and description information. This directly addresses the finding that users wanted a credibility signal before shortlisting a property, reducing the ambiguity users felt when evaluating unfamiliar listings.
Map view button added to listing descriptions
A map view icon was added to the property header row, giving users a direct path to visualize the property location, surrounding neighborhood, and proximity to campus. This resolves the most consistently raised concern across all four participants and reduces the cognitive load of interpreting text-based commute distances.
Leave a review option added to property pages
A "Leave a review" button was added alongside the existing "Send a Message" call to action on the property detail page. This enables users with prior experience of a listing to contribute their perspective, building a trust layer within the app over time and directly addressing the request raised by multiple participants.
DePaul credentials login option introduced
The login screen was updated to include a "Login with DePaul Credentials" button alongside the standard email and password fields. This aligns the application's authentication model with students' existing digital habits, reduces friction at the point of first use, and addresses privacy concerns around sharing personal email addresses.
Survey tone rewritten to be welcoming
The heading "I know it's tiring..." was removed from the preferences survey page. The revised version opens directly with "One last Surveyrama before we send our rats looking for rentals..." which retains the app's playful voice without signaling to users that the upcoming task is a burden. This small copy change had an outsized effect on user sentiment during the survey flow.
Reflection
What this project taught me
This project reinforced how much a single word choice can shape user perception. The "I know it's tiring" phrase is a clear example of copy that intended empathy but communicated doubt. Users did not need to be warned about the task; they needed to be encouraged through it. Reframing that single heading changed the emotional register of the entire survey interaction.
The consistency of the map request across all four participants also demonstrated the value of recruiting from existing contextual inquiry participants. Because these users had real-world experience with the apartment search process, their feedback was grounded in genuine mental models rather than abstract preferences. They knew what was missing because they had encountered the same gap in tools they had actually used.
My primary contribution to this project was the findings and recommendations synthesis, which required consolidating four independent test sessions into a coherent set of actionable priorities. The key challenge was distinguishing between individual preferences and systemic patterns. The five redesign decisions reflect patterns that appeared across at least two participants, ensuring that the changes were grounded in evidence rather than a single user's opinion.
I could see a lot of effort in understanding the user and making it easy for students, which I feel is the selling point of the application. I would definitely use it and recommend it to other students.
Participant 2 — Overall Satisfaction Response