Renting Reimagined
Time
2023.10 - 2023.12
Sector
Public Interest | Campus Affairs
Role
Research | Visual design | Information architecture
Teammates
Joe Schnackertz | Jasmine Sun
Collaboration
Northeastern University Off-campus Engagement and Support Department
As a student at Northeastern University, I've had firsthand experience with the daunting task of finding rental accommodation in Boston. This experience, echoed by my fellow students, has been notably challenging both to domestic students and international students. Driven by personal experiences and observations, we discovered that many student renters are not only unfamiliar with the rental process but also unaware of their rights as tenants. Despite Northeastern University offering housing advice through a dedicated department, there lacked a comprehensive resource guiding students through the entire rental journey. And we want to change that and reimagine the renting experience.
Goal.
Inform, protect and empower Northeastern University students who are renting property in Boston.
Improve the experience of renting properties as a Northeastern University students in Boston.
Provide resources to Northeastern University students who are renting property in Boston.
Solution.
Literature Review.
Before diving into research our team spent time understanding and defining the problem we were trying to address. Our first step was to examine existing sources to identify issues that student renters experience. This examination led us to several key findings.
| Boston is an extremely expensive place to live.
“No other major New England city comes even close to the latest Boston average rent. Comparing years, from December 2021 to December 2022, the average rent in Boston increased by roughly 9.4%, from $3,113 to $3,405.”
| Student renters are not familiar with the rental process.
While Northeastern University has a dedicated department for students to seek housing advice, there is not one resource that can guide students through the whole renting journey.
| Student renters were not familiar with their rights as renters
They don’t know how to protect their rights and stand up for themselves.
Findings
Financial Burden: student do not have a significant or steady source of income therefore cannot afford to pay the high rental rates in Boston.
Power Gap: student renters have neither the knowledge/experience of renting in the past or the authority to pass back against decisions and actions of the landlord.
Hierarchy of needs: reliable and safe shelter is a basic need that all people need, it is the view of our group that stress over a housing situation can cause issues in other parts of a renting student’s life.
Increasing rental price: it is no secret that Boston is one of the most expensive cities to live in the country, this leaves students in a troubling situation when they are trying to complete their hard earned degrees and could not plan for rental price increases year over year
Based on that, we developed our HMV question…
How Might We inform, protect, and empower
Northeastern University students
who are renting property in the city of Boston?
Research.
In order to understand the feelings, experiences, thoughts and actions of our target population (student renters at Northeastern) our team decided to conduct three types of data collection: observation, surveying, and interviews.
Observation.
| Part 1 Social Media
Since the common time for securing apartments had part, our team decided to conduct ‘secondary observations’ to collect the data we needed. Our team made our secondary observation on social media sites including Red, Yammer, and WhatsApp. These sites are used by students to find apartment availability, exchange information, and secure properties. Much of what we learned from these sites was that rent can be very different, ranging from $500 to $2000 per month for a person in a shared house. Most of the posts focus on location, infrastructure, and price. Some would also introduce basic information about roommates.
| Part 2 Workshop
Our team observed a workshop hosted by Northeastern’s Off-Campus Engagement and Support department. The workshop covers a wide range of contents, which is also the daily work of Northeastern’s Off-Campus Engagement and Support department:
Help students connect with housing resources
Help students to find their roommates
Help students to solve their renting issues
Help students connect to attorney support if needed
| Conclusion:
We discovered that although Northeastern University Off-Campus Engagement and Support Department offers numerous resources, very few students are aware of and utilize these resources, and there are not a lot of students participated in the workshop. There’s a disconnection between the resources and the student renters.
Survey.
In order to further explore our research question, our team created and conducted surveying to collect more detailed information about our target group: Northeastern University students renting in the Boston area.
This 25 question survey attempted to capture a wide picture of the experiences of student renters based on topics including safety, renting experience, and finances. Over one week, our team collected 60 responses. We distributed our survey by sending out the link to several What’sApp groups related to Northeastern and even posted the link in a message asking for participation to the official “Northeastern Off Campus Housing” Yammer group. Additionally, our team brought scannable QR codes with each member and walked around the Northeastern campus asking for students to participate.
We analyzed all the surveys and here’s the result…
Through the data, we realize the problem is not the limitation of resources, but the limited awareness of students and the information gap in between.
Interview.
To understand more details besides quantitative data, we conducted three interviews: two with student renters (A and B) and one with a stakeholder from the NU Off-Campus Engagement and Support Department. The interviews revealed diverse challenges and needs among Northeastern student renters. Awareness of on-campus resources is limited, and there are common issues such as deposit disputes and rent increases. The NU Off-Campus Engagement and Support Department plays a crucial role in providing support, but efforts are needed to enhance student awareness and follow-up. Tailored communication strategies, early resource dissemination, and improved support during co-op experiences could contribute to better informing, protecting, and empowering NU student renters in the city of Boston.
Analysis.
Affinity Diagram
To capture the entirety of our selected problem (NEU students’ renting experience in Boston) and begin to process the data that we collected, we created an affinity diagram. This diagram breaks down the major concerns and action of our target group: student renters at Northeastern. We identified several major categories that emerged from our research: the market, rent price, the profile of the renter, how concerns are addressed, and problems both before and after moving in.
Draft
Digital Poster
Persona
From the affinity map and our data collected from our research process, our team created two user personas to summarize our research findings. Each persona is intended to broadly capture the types of situations students at NEU find themselves in while renting in Boston.
User Journey Map
In addition to the personas that we created, our group took the persona of SeungJun Kim further by creating a user journey map of his experience renting up to the point of signing the lease.
The goal of the experience journey map was to better capture the emotions that the students expressed in our research phase. The previously shown personas can provide detailed descriptions, but lack the feeling that comes with the renting process.
Intervention Opportunities
02 | Increase awareness of renters’ rights
01 | Increase awareness of the existing support resources for renters in the NEU network
03 | There is a knowledge gap for first time student renters and those new to Boston
04 | Smooth the roommate finding process
Final Design.
Based on the first prototype we developed and the feedback received, we reorganized and redesigned the housing page for the NEU Off-Campus Engagement website.
Design Concept
Our team will create an interactive platform that takes current and incoming NEU students on an apartment renting journey from search to move-in. We will be able to expand this platform in the future to capture additional journeys such as subletting, navigating roommate conflicts, move-out, and more.
Current Website
Information Architecture
We used information architecture to help us understand the structure of the current website and then improve it.
To summarize this concept, a student would log onto this platform with their current NU credentials. Once in, the student would be invited to begin going through mini lessons related to their renting an apartment. An avatar of Paws (Northeastern’s mascot) will be the student’s guide as they go through each lesson. Every lesson, or group of lessons done unlocks the next set of lessons. The lessons match the steps that the students will be taking in their apartment search. At the end of the journey, the student should either successfully rented an apartment or be confident in their knowledge of renting to move forward on steps on their own. The student can always go back and visit the lessons they competed in to review the knowledge.
