The UX Research Team, led by Kelley Howell, is responsible for understanding user experience with their product suite and the broader real estate search process. Through methods like analytics, A/B testing, usability tests, interviews, and observation, they seek to answer questions about whether users can and want to use their products. They integrate findings into product development to continually improve user experience and inform strategic design decisions. UX researchers work with product teams, devising artifacts like principles, practices, and patterns to resolve user frustrations based on design knowledge, and use methods in the design phase to prompt innovation.

1. UX Research Team
Kelley Howell, Manager

2. Mission
Responsible for understanding the user experience
of our product suite and the broader real estate
search process.
The goal is to integrate empirical findings about
users’ needs and goals into our product process,
continually improving both tactical product
development and strategic product design.

3. Guiding Questions
We ask and report on three questions about users,
our products, and the tools with which they find
homes to buy or rent:
1. Can I use it?
2. Should I use it?
3. Do I want to use it more than other products?
4. Do I value using it?

4. Methods
To answer our questions we conduct research,
gathering data from the following:
1. Visitor analytics
2.A/B experiments
3. Usability tests
4. Interviews
5. Observation: ride alongs with buyers, renters, and real estate agents
6. Diary Studies
7. Surveys

5. UX Solutions
Having uncovered frustrations with the home
search products and the online search process,
UX design resolves these frustrations by drawing
on a UX body of knowledge:
1. Principles, practices, and patterns: frameworks and
libraries of existing research-based design solutions
2. Tools and exercises to prompt creativity and
innovation in the product design process

6. UX Solutions
UX teams work with product and design teams
devising design artifacts:
1. Principles to govern the appearance, behavior, brand
image, and voice of our products
2. Practices defined in manuals of style and best practice
for solving users problems
3. Patterns house libraries and look books of common
solutions to user problems

7. UX Solutions
UX researchers draw on methods to prompt
innovation in the product design phase:
1. Design thinking workshops
2. User story mapping
3.Application frameworks / pattern libraries
4. Task and contextual analysis
5. Lean UX validation testing