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MCMAKLER
McMakler is a German real-estate company who sell houses, apartments and other properties. This was a 3 hour unpaid interview task to redesign the house detail page.
THE TASK
Redo the 'House detail' page, using information on this page https://immobilien.mcmakler.de/expose/18655 and hints from Google’s Material Design.
Header and footer with navigation are not required, although McMakler logo should be placed. Information could be reshuffled, changed and added compared to information on the listing.
Expected result: desktop and mobile design of the page with horizontal resolution of 1280px and 480px accordingly. Please provide a story, describing how the design decisions were made and what was the thinking behind it.
So I am being asked to design a web-page and show reasons why I made 'design decisions' yet there is no information to base those decisions on, such as access to user research or personas, or access to users so that I can create those assets!
This is typical of these 'Design challenges' a.k.a Free work - they are poorly conceived in almost every case, based on a lack of understanding of proper UX process from the hiring company. Over the past 3 years, I've done many hours of this free work and I honestly wonder if they're a trick question, but unfortunately, they're serious.
I think these tasks are given because developers are asked to do code challenges, but proper, meaningful UX work cannot be done in a handful of hours and without proper UX process including research! See more on this at the end of this article..
The existing 'House detail' page is shown to the right.
My initial impression is that the page is very 'wordy' and that there are many opportunities to have more visual cues and useful segregation of information and make the page less 'light grey all-over'
Also the text in the 'Property Details' runs across the full screen width, and that is well-known to be poor design for readability, with the optimal words across the paragraph width being around 7+
MY FEEDBACK
I was offered this task during the interview, and I pointed out that proper UX design is based on user research. In this case it depends on 'who is doing the task' i.e. the persona going through the experience as this indicates what their goals would be, and that would lead to different design decisions.
For example you might have 3 different personas which would only be identified in user research, but for the sake of illustrating the point, they could be:
1. 'Location focused' who wants to search by area name or postcode, and see results on a map, plus be able to adjust that map area for various reasons and then see location information clearly on the 'House detail' page.
2. 'Rooms focussed' ie they are looking for a room for each person in the household or
3. 'Localilty focussed' i.e they need to have good public transport, schools, sports or other specific facilities in the area.
For the uninitiated in UX methods, it may seem impossible, but you can design a website and user flows for many different personas at the same time, if you consider them properly and offer layout/tools for each scenario. A simple example of this is 1 tab for each scenario (location, rooms or local features), however ideally the page design will seamlessly offer the ideal experience for each persona type simultaneously, and there may well be many more persona types and they may well combine.
PERSONA GIVEN
The interviewer saw my point and added the following persona information when sending over the task:
Abel, male, 45. Lives in Munich. Looking for the move into a bigger, but still German city, since he is expecting a baby with his wife in 4 months. He seeks to replace his older 50m2 apartment in Munich and use Berlin’s price difference to have the same lifestyle, but in a bigger 3 bedroom apartment. Since he is expecting a baby, he concerned about the neighbourhood. The Munich apartment might cover the price, but he might also need a financing for this exchange.
So in summary he is looking for:
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Unrented apartment
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Berlin
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3 bedroom
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Good neighbourhood i.e. safe, but also with perhaps parks and schools
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There is an opportunity to offer him finance, which I would say is a core business offering and should always be a visible option, easy to get a finance quote and easy to use *
* If I worked at this company, I would confirm the overarching business plan, and the OKR's early in my role so that the UX work I do will support those business goals. i.e. if the business makes a good proportion of income from financing, it would be a high priority to build in offering that throughout the whole site.
Any user who did scroll down, found a search box and a very long country selector dropdown and the search results and product pages were very poor as they had no product DB!
QUICK SITE PERSONA RUN-THROUGH
Note: 'Flasche ab' I worked out means the floor area in metres squared. i.e. if you enter 100 in that box, it brings up results of at least 100 square metres floor area. I think this needs to at least have the units in that search box.
Side-note
When making a search, the user is immediately asked if they want a house, a flat, house, property, parking space, business or investment search. Whilst 'All' is an option, the interface seems to force this choice and make the 'All' option quite invisible. My issue with this approach is that often a user doesn't care if it's a house or apartment, they just want a 'place to live' and many would love a house if it were affordable. Plus, what is the meaning of 'property' here, does it mean just land, as I would argue that a house and an apartment is also a property. Also, an investment could be any or all of the above. I think that some research into how users really want to search could vastly improve this search bar.
Many sites force users to do things because that's how the database is designed, which is not good UX design.
Why am I looking at pages before the page I need to redesign? because the whole user journey should be taken into account to be able to understand the mindset that the user has arrived at the page in.
How do I decide if 'Constuction year' or 'Storey' and all other elements like these should go together, and where they should be on the page? I need more research with users to be able to do this job properly.
Right now I can only say an image carousel, a clear map of location should be close to the top of the page, and the number of rooms need to be clearly visible also close to the top. Other than that I have very little information to base decisions on.
Yes, I could go ahead and make a pretty material design layout (UI Design), but it would not be worth very much when based on such meager research, offering no reasons to make design decisions.
Ok, so at this point I've spend 1.5 hours on this task and I still am not even close to being able to start designing a layout for this persona.
I hope you can see why the background to the designing is the 'iceberg' that you never see, but is absolutely fundamental to good design. How do I now decide how to layout this page for this persona, when he hasn't been able to satisfactorily make a search for an unrented apartment in a 'Good' berlin suburb?
How will only knowing that he's looking for 3 bedrooms in Berlin even help me to design that house detail page so it's perfect for him?
WHAT'S NEXT?
I'll send these findings back to McMakler and offer to them that I now do a redesign of the 'House detail' page, however on the understanding that it will have very little to do with good UX, and will only prove my material design and UI skills - since I have no statistics on how the users are using the site now, who they are, what their intentions are, how they use the site (i.e. approach) and how many of the users end up with a successful result (and a house sale for McMakler) - also known as conversion funnels.
It's worth noting, that whilst many companies shy away from proper user research, it's not as expensive or time consuming as they might perceive, and it's fundamental to 'getting it right' and pleasing users with amazing experiences which just 'make their life easier' to the point where they not only buy whatever it is you're selling, but they keep coming back and recommending it to their friends.
THE ANSWER
I would like you to approach the single property listing page and do a wireframe, showing your initial thoughts and ideas on:
— what information should be there
— in what order user should consume it
— overall thinking for that part
MY DESKTOP WIREFRAME
Click image below to view in browser
I would like you to approach the single property listing page and do a wireframe, showing your initial thoughts and ideas on:
— what information should be there
— in what order user should consume it
— overall thinking for that part
This is a wireframe only, not a finished UI or visual web design.
I've kept most database fields the same, since I don't have detailed information about the database fields, or how it's collected. For example, the property information is likely collected by real estate agents or McMakler staff from all over Germany.
The layout has been designed only for the basic persona supplied, and for a general audience. For instance, users viewing this page will be looking for a fast overview of many properties in one session, so they will want to quickly get an impression of the most important points first, hence the images, location, price etc are all kept in the top section.
Since this is only supposed to be a 3 hour task, and I don't have proper user research, I have not changed the design sense of the page wildly, although I would like to.
ITEMS OF NOTE
The material design chips at the top, including the yellow 'For young families' is intended to be a user flow where Abel (the persona supplied) can make a search of this specific property type. The chips are highlighted when both the property and the suburb has been listed as 'suitable for young families' This would require a separate look-up database, but it is not difficult to obtain the data or set up and adds huge value in this user types journey. This is of course dependant on changes to the earlier search journey.
ITEMS OF NOTE
The location map would animate to cover the whole top section including the house images until closed, exactly the same as the house images currently do.
ITEMS OF NOTE
ITEMS OF NOTE
The call to action 'Enquire today' is placed at the top and the bottom, however in further UI design, this could remain visible on the page at all scroll-levels.
See any house listing on airbnb.com and scroll down to see an example of that.
The information hierarchy on the page has been reordered to show a quick overview at the top for the user to scan when viewing many properties e.g. price and location. The detail then becomes more fine-grained when moving further down the page, and has been split into 'about the property' and 'about the surrounding location' with info like schools, a lake and doctor and supermarket are close-by pulled out for easy view for this persona.
MY MOBILE WIREFRAME
THE OUTCOME
After being told the last step was to discuss a job offer with the CTO, I then received the following by email
"Hello Rachael,
I have the latest news regarding the application process. After a long discussion between different departments they finally could come to an agreement. As a result, the management decided that they don't need a UX researcher at the current moment (initially we were looking for an UX/UI Designer) and asked me to cancel your application. I am sorry for bringing you such news. Anyway, you provided a very good impression on the technical team, so, I think, that you will be able to find a new thrilling option pretty soon."
WHICH IS ABSOLUTELY INFURIATING because I am not just a UX researcher, I have been trying in very trying circumstances to do this job properly i.e. follow proper UX process to create a UX design for them, and the process is 1. UX research 2. UI Design 3. User Testing, and they have incorrectly assumed that I'm a researcher.
Update July 2022 - I never did land a UX job in Berlin because all the companies and management are ignorant and demand these retarded design challenges. Trying to deal with people like this ruined my UX career and so I moved on to trying to make money in other ways.
Why I don't work for free...
Why
In recent years, #UX workers are expected to supplicate themselves to all potential employers by carrying out #free #tasks (Avg. 4-10 hours of effort). There's many issues with this:
1. Their time estimate is always a joke, it takes way longer to produce work of value, if you're following best practice UX process.
2. UX portfolio's are ignored - They take weeks per year to document and present all the work done during working time, and there's hosting costs involved, so why bother?
3. The tasks are often badly conceived with vague, incoherent demands and little background information or opportunity/time to obtain it e.g. access to users or research or personas
4. The point of the task is to 'prove how keen you are for the job' which has the effect of
a) making inexperienced candidates spend 10x longer on it, therefore not an equal playing ground and
b) Ending with a poor hire due to a) and because people with 10-20 years successful career refuse to play this retarded game.
5. Many unscrupulous companies take advantage, often offering 'free tasks' before even a first interview to 30+ candidates. Most likely there is no real job, and the work will be used for the company without paying the candidate. I run my own business, so spending 20 hours unpaid is not a good use of my time!
Companies should only offer tasks to about 3 candidates and only after the 2nd interview and should always give feedback on the task, which in my experience they never have, which vindicates all I have said above.
In Summary:
It's not a moral obligation to supplicate yourself to a potential employer. This is why I ALWAYS ask first what the interview process is, and if a free task is involved, I offer "I'd be happy to do that project for you as an independent contractor!" I even offer a 75% discount i.e. to charge only €20/hr, yet still they just want free work. [I've even now been turned down for full-time jobs because they read on my application that I will charge only 25% of my usual freelancer rate for the free task, and they decide that I am ONLY a freelancer due to that one sentence... talk about skim-reading]
On the off chance they are a legitimate company with this interview practice there is a path forward. If they are asking you to go to extraordinary lengths to prove you're a good employee, then they should be willing to prove they are a good employer by paying you for the work that you do for them.
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