Homi
Make home-hunting, tenant-finding, and rent management simpler, safer, and smarter.
❗The Problem
Current housing platforms focus on listing ads, but do little to help people actively search for roommates or ensure trust between parties.
Some key issues I identified:
- Landlords are flooded with inquiries they can’t filter or manage
- House-seekers often never hear back, or get scammed
- Roommate compatibility and payment issues are common
- There’s no easy way to verify payment history, or communication
✅ The Solution
An app that allows users to:
- Create a profile, whether they’re looking for a house, a housemate or a tenant
- Pay rent through the app
- Rate and review the landlords and tenants
- More advanced filters (age, lifestyle, LGBTQ+ friendliness, dietary preferences, etc
- Threaded messaging
🧭 Context
This was my final year school project.
A few years ago, I posted an ad looking for a new housemate. Within a week, I received 120 emails. The process was overwhelming, for me and for the many people who never heard back.
It made me wonder: Why is finding (or filling) a room so exhausting?
That frustration led me to investigate the rental experience and design a better solution.
🔍 User Research
To validate these frustrations and uncover real user pain points, I conducted mixed-method research:
- Street interviews
- Online questionnaires
- One-on-one interviews
I explored users’ experiences with renting, roommate-finding, and landlord interactions.
📌 Key Insights
- Users want to “pre-screen” potential roommates, often through social media
- Landlord reviews sound helpful, but reviewing roommates feels invasive
- Rent management often falls on one tenant, leading to financial disputes or manipulation
- There’s demand for more specific filters: age, LGBTQ+ friendly, dietary preferences, etc.
- Users struggle to track inquiries, as ads often disappear before replies are received
👤 Personas
Based on user interviews, I created three core personas with distinct needs:
Janet – the landlord
Wants to screen tenants before reaching out. She’s cautious after bad experiences and prefers passive control, like viewing verified profiles and references without manually reviewing 100+ emails.
Gabriela – the house seeker
Scammed in the past, Gabriela wants safety and transparency. She needs to act fast but doesn’t want to rush into another unreliable rental or absentee landlord.
John – the flatmate
In charge of rent collection, John wants someone reliable and LGBTQ+ friendly.
🧠 Empathy Mapping
To deepen my understanding, I created empathy maps focused on Gabriela and John, my two primary users.
🔄 User Flows & Wireframes
🎨 Branding and Design system
Homi balances a youthful, modern feel with trust and professionalism. I create its design system in Figma.
- Colours: Blue (trust), orange (energy), grey (neutral balance)
- Fonts: Raleway (friendly & fun), Open Sans (clean & readable)
📱 Prototype
I originally used InVision to build a prototype and tested it with 5 users. Their feedback helped refine key screens and interactions.
I then rebuilt it in Figma, improving its UI.
📣 Promotion & Engagement
To drive interest and downloads:
- I designed and coded a landing page for the app
- Launched social media accounts and a blog
- Organised a Speedflatmating event, a fun in-person mixer where people could meet potential housemates and learn about the app. The event was promoted via Facebook
🔧 Challenges & Learnings
- I initially designed too many screens, forgetting the focus on MVP. I learned to prioritise usability and core flows over exhaustive features
- I neglected the landlord persona in early phases and realised later that more research was needed to validate their needs
- I conducted only one round of usability testing. More iterations would have helped ensure that changes made a measurable impact
🧩 Next Steps
If developed further, I’d:
- Expand landlord research
- Conduct multiple testing rounds
- Develop a desktop version