Key

Designing a digital solution to help create community amongst condominium residents

During my last year of study at the University of Toronto, I participated in a multidisciplinary capstone design project, working in a group of 6 consisting mostly of students from different faculties and disciplines. Together, we undertook a project offered by Key, a Toronto-based startup that is pioneering a co-ownership model to help people start building home equity earlier.

ROLE

Researcher
Designer

TIMELINE

September 2020 - April 2021

TOOLS

Pen and paper
Figma

TEAM

6 members

PROBLEM

Feelings of loneliness and isolation are growing issues amongst millennials living in high-rise condominiums

Key is a brand that values community creation and local engagement. However, one in three city-dwellers suffer from feelings of loneliness and isolation, as high-rise condominiums are often poorly designed and not conducive to social interactions, with the COVID-19 pandemic only further outlining its importance. As a result, people are feeling increasingly isolated when living alone in these condominium settings. Key asked our team to design solutions that will promote social interactions and engagement among Key owner-residents to help build a sense of community.

SOLUTION

In the end, we created a solution that revolves around a mobile application, complemented by events and community partnerships recommendations, as well as architectural designs of common spaces.

Pulling from primary survey research, we defined community as the level of connectedness between residents and other residents, as well as the surrounding neighborhood. To help develop that sense of community, our design would need to facilitate social interactions amongst people and with the local neighborhood.

Our solution has three components:

Mobile app (my primary involvement) – The main platform for users to browse building and neighbourhood activities, connect with others, and redeem rewards
Multi-purpose event space – A place for residents to engage/interact with other people and the neighborhood
Events and community partnership catalog – provide recommendations, guidance in improving resident engagement with both the building and the local neighbourhood

The key metric of the overall solution is the design’s ability to facilitate social interactions between residents, while the effectiveness of the app will be measured through usage and engagement statistics, as well as qualitative feedback and user satisfaction.

My contributions

As a member of the app design team, I was responsible for interpreting UX research data to develop functions and requirements for the app. I collaborated with other team members to sketch out app features before converting them into wireframes. I was also in charge of usability testing efforts, from preparing survey material to overseeing testing sessions and analyzing feedback to inform revisions for the high-fidelity prototype.

Stakeholders

Throughout the project, we met weekly with chief marketing officer and senior community advisor from Key, whose goals were to provide resources and internal insights that would assist us throughout the project. We also updated them on our progress and discussed concerns after major deliverables, such as the design proposal, design review, and the final report. My design team also met with the lead designer from Key to discuss their product roadmap and understand how our app design would fit in alongside their existing features and platforms.

One major real-life constraint that stood out throughout the project was that the client wasn’t first-handedly involvement in our research process, so they were less aware of how their perspective and scope would influence that process. Additionally, our focus was not only to create a solution that satisfied the client but also to ensure our work scored well against the course rubric, we had to evaluate the feasibility of their requests and justify our decisions to them.

User research

Building on literature review, we created a survey to better understand people’s attitude, motivations, and behaviors towards building a sense of community in a condominium environment. The survey was distributed through relevant urban forums on social media to target people with more familiarity and experience with condominiums, yielding 107 responses. Even though most respondents had condominium living experience, we believed it was important to understand the perspectives of those that don’t, as they could provide insights as a prospective market.

From our research, we predicted that technology would be a welcomed tool in encouraging engagement with others. Similarly, we also predicted that people generally have an underlying want to know their neighbors and get involved in the neighborhood but don’t know where to start.

Key insights

Pie chart of respondents' current living situation

84%

wish there was a centralized place to find information about local stores, events, and opportunities

77%

would like to give back to their local community

75%

would like to be more involved in their local neighbourhood

61%

want to get to know their neighbors better but don’t know where to start

Functional Requirements

Before doing any sketching, we developed functional requirements from our understanding of the users through survey data. The requirements would establish what the app has to do and inform the feature designs prior to sketching.

Functional Requirements:

To enable users to browse and join community events
To enable users to manage their own profile and browse the profiles of other residents
To enable users to host and manage community events
To provide users with incentives for continuous app interaction
To enable users to engage in community discussions through creating, viewing, and commenting on posts

Design

While some features desired by potential users already exist in some form, we would not only unite those features under one app, but also design how those features interact with each other and the Key ecosystem. Two notable examples that were consulted are Facebook and Nextdoor.

Facebook’s Marketplace feature allows users to buy or sell items, with various options and filters that provide a robust structure for a marketplace feature on an app.
The Nextdoor app is a local social network app in which users browse news and events in their neighbourhood. Distinctive features include strictly location-based content as well as deals and promotions from local businesses.

Our team decided upon the features below, retrofitting aspects from other mobile apps with functions we customized for Key.

Events: Unlike other apps, users not only create an event but also book an event space and setup provided by Key
Marketplace: A place for users to buy and sell items amongst Key residents
Groups: To help users connect with others through shared interests
Rewards: Our survey indicated that people wish to give back to the community. This feature would incentivize app engagement in exchange for community-centric rewards

My design team and I came together to share our sketches and discuss to finalize the capabilities of each feature, before creating a low-fidelity prototype for usability testing.

Preliminary sketches of the features

Screenshots of low-fidelity prototype used for usability testing:
Event creation details, Choosing event venue, Groups homepage, Marketplace

Usability Testing

To gather feedback on the usability of the wireframes, we conducted usability testing with 5 representative users to ensure representation of all four of our personas. I created scenarios for participants to complete and wrote a discussion guide to gather insights from users and help identify problematic areas in our wireframe.

2 of the 5 users confused the recommended groups on the Groups home page for group categories.
- To fix this issue, group categories were displayed on the Groups home page to match the users’ expectations and behaviors.
While creating an event, 2 of the 5 users expected to be able to manually input a time range for the event, as they were unsure of how to interact with the time selection interface design.
- To fix this issue, manual input of time range for event creation was added to allow users an additional method of entering their desired time frame.

High-fidelity prototype

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Final Design

High-fidelity prototype GIF of joining a group

Browsing a category and selecting a group to join

Screenshots of high-fidelity prototype used for final showcase:
App homepage, Events homepage, Groups homepage, Rewards

High-fidelity prototype GIF of selecting an event space and setup when creating an event

Choosing an event space and setup when creating an event

You can view the full prototype here.

Outcome

We presented our project at the APS490 Virtual Showcase and the School of Cities Final Design Showcase, where we received great feedback from the judges and passersby. We were also invited to host a Lunch and Learn session with Key to present our work to other employees, where they asked questions about our research, the decision-making processes, and the practical implications behind certain features. It was interesting to see their approach towards understanding our design, as well as learn about the company’s current progress.

Presentation poster >>

Final Thoughts

The project had the added challenge of working with people who were not familiar with the engineering design language and process, allowing me to further refine my communication skills. Having never worked on a project that spanned the entire academic year, I further understood the importance of consistency and commitment when others depend on your performance. With that in mind, it will be important for me to maintain and improve the habit of coordinating with others and understanding how my work fits in with those of others, especially with people of different expertise.