Community Housing: Transformation and Process to a Redesign

The Community Housing Listing sponsored by ASUCD is an interactive listing of living options in the city of Davis, CA. Whether you want to post a listing (available at a small fee) or search for listings, the site is open to both the UC Davis community and the greater Davis community. The website tries to compile all listings into one server to provide students the information they need to settle into a living situation.

Users of CHL have “experienced worse,” in the words of one interviewee. The site presents most information in a logical place. However, users believe that the listing could be better. They want to be able to compare listings both pictorally and textually with ease. The users also want to be certain of some of the terms within the site, for example the meaning of “Shared” and “Not Shared.”

This redesign attempts to meet the needs of the user in a more intuitive way. The measure of our success is through reduced pain points and more site traffic.

The site map was created with a wayfinding perspective. We want the users to be able to do exactly what they need in a simple way. This is done through prior knowledge and logical headers. People are used to certain features of websites: the home is on the left and the contact is on the right of the navigation panel. We tried to keep this in mind while finding ways to incorporate what is needed for a successful site.

The wireframe was less difficult than the site map, since you know where the information should be. That being said, laying out the information in a hierarchy of what is important requires more thought. Fitting what is necessary with acceptable negative space while still fitting within the screen is a challenge. However, modularity allowed us to transfer portions of the design to other areas of the site.

Next steps include an iteration process of critique, redesign, and testing.