Buying a home can be a difficult process in Singapore, with 5.7 million people living in an area half the size of Los Angeles. I spent Spring semester of 2019 on exchange at National University of Singapore, where my team used service design methods to help the Singaporean government agency GovTech simplify and celebrate the home buying experience.
ROLE
TOOLS

Creating and executing interviews
Building user flows
Producing our branding materials and video

Sketch, Adobe CS, InVision

USER RESEARCH

We held in-person interviews consisting of:

3 married couples
2 engaged couples
2
single adults aged 21-35

And an 11 person online survey with:

university students
married individuals
engaged individuals
single individuals
We held in-person interviews consisting of:
3 married couples
2 engaged couples
2
single adults aged 21-35
And an online survey with:
university students
married individuals
engaged individuals
single individuals

During the in-person interviews, we provided a simple overview of the buying process to refresh the users' memories, then allowed them to outline each step, writing down what they were feeling, struggling with, and how they were getting information along the way. We used the interviews and survey to:

Find out the motivation of young couples or individuals to buy a built-to-order home.
Were they tired of the limited freedom of living with parents, or were they ready to start their own family and needed more space?

Discover the different factors that they considered during their planning.
How far into the future were they planning and saving for? Where could they find information to begin the process?

Uncover difficulties in the planning and application process.
What parts of the journey were the most burdensome? What resources are available to guide them through the long and complicated process?

INSIGHTS & SYNTHESIS

We synthesized the findings from our interviews and survey, and organized the process into three distinct phases: planning, applying, and post-application. We found key pain-points from our users during each of these phases:

Planning Phase

1. Information is scattered and variable
2. Feels like there's still plenty of time to save money and plan
3. Uneven work distribution between couples

Application Phase

1. Difficulty tracking information from multiple sources
2. Starting to face financial difficulties due to poor planning
3. Poor communication between couples on who's tracking what
Post-Application

1. Realized too late that planning ahead is crucial
2. Young couples struggle to cover home payments on top of the expenses of young adulthood
Planning Phase

1. Information is scattered and variable
2. Feels like there's still plenty of time to save money and plan
3. Uneven work distribution between couples
Application Phase

1. Difficulty tracking information from multiple sources
2. Starting to face financial difficulties due to poor planning
3. Poor communication between couples on who's tracking what
Post-Application

1. Realized too late that planning ahead is crucial
2. Young couples struggle to cover home payments on top of the expenses of young adulthood
USER GOALS

Assurance, relief, and preparedness throughout the process.
Make sure that we're providing the right information at the right times to not overwhelm or misinform the user, as well as ensuring that the process is straightforward and usable.

Anticipation for the future and celebration of milestones.
Encourage collaboration between partners, and create interactions and design elements that incite a sense of joy and excitement for entering a new stage of life.

IDEATION

After organizing our ideation session, we chose a few concepts to move forward with. We began integrating them into a mobile app, which we then performed user testing on with 5 of our original interviewees.

USER TESTING

Much of our testing was focused on usability, which we measured by giving users tasks to complete and mimicking the interactions of clicking through the app. This helped us omit unnecessary elements, prioritize more important interactions, and settle on a design language as we moved into the final design.

Timely and filtered information.

Questionnaires filter out relevant information and choices for users while they're creating their account. With this information,  housing and other financial costs are tabulated to create goals and alert couples how much they need to save. Timely notifications keep users on track with the BTO process and their long-term financial goals.

Encouragement of collaboration between partners.

Data and information syncs across both devices to keep both partners involved. Each person can set lifestyle financial goals  that update in real time. Both couple’s CPF (compulsory  savings and pension plan for working Singaporeans) are linked to their financial goal. Engages both partners in the process rather than one person bearing the burden of planning and tracking finances.
Celebration of milestones along the way, both with their partner and with friends and family.

Each milestone along the way provides an opportunity to take a photo and share it with friends and family on social media. The map and savings bars gamify the process, and bring a sense of light-heartedness to the long process.
LEARNINGS
User experience design isn't just for the end-user.

Working with the Singaporean government and understanding how the housing process affects them helped to not only inform this project, but also inform my understanding of service design. It helped me understand the bigger picture of how design can be used to transform an entire system.
Invaluable lessons in what school, friendship, and accountability means outside of the US.

I was assigned a group for this project, but my groupmates ended up being some of the people I spent the most time with on exchange. Whether it was trying new food or seeing parts of the country that tourists usually don't, I couldn't have "lived like a Singaporean" without them.
User experience design isn't just for the end-user.

Working with the Singaporean government and understanding how the housing process affects them helped to not only inform this project, but also inform my understanding of service design. It helped me understand the bigger picture of how design can be used to transform an entire system.
Invaluable lessons in what school, friendship, and accountability means outside of the US.

I was assigned a group for this project, but my groupmates ended up being some of the people I spent the most time with on exchange. Whether it was trying new food or seeing parts of the country that tourists usually don't, I couldn't have "lived like a Singaporean" without them.