Opendoor home access experience
Opendoor created an innovative home-buying experience by allowing people to self-tour homes on their own time without pressure from a real estate agent.
Customers have praised the ability to unlock homes and self-tour as one of the most delightful home buying experiences.
My Role:
Trust & safety team product designer
My process
Define
Journey analysis
Requirement gathering
Design
Early variations
Prototyping
Evangelize
Presentations
Cross-team meetings
Validate
User testing
Field testing
Define the problem:
access issues
A major defect for self-tours is when customers are unable to get inside for a variety of reasons. I storyboarded the negative experience when customers can’t get in (and luckily it rhymes).
Root cause issues
There were several factors contributing to home access issues, but one of the root causes was improper set up of the front door smartlock.
Front door smartlock
Misalignment caused doorlock jams
Brainstorm and ideate
I collaborated with my Engineering, Product, and Operations partners to brainstorm and align on a general strategy to increase security device set up quality to avoid door jams or devices going offline.
We decided to focus design on our internal tablet app, since that's what operators were relying on in the field. It was particularly important to ensure front door keypads were set up correctly so people could let themselves in.
Designs: set up walkthrough
Final designs featured a home walkthrough test where the Home Project Manager must walk the house as a buyer might, checking the front door lock and all security device signals to make sure each device was working as expected.
User feedback and field trials
I conducted user tests with 5 Home Projects Managers of varying levels of experience and received largely positive feedback. After validating the designs, we field tested the feature with a select group of users.
It would be beneficial in the long run to make sure we don't have any other access issues..."
"
— Senior Home Project Manager
Spending 5 to 10 minutes on this is better than having to drive back out here to fix things."
"
— Junior Home Project Manager
Double checking devices is entirely up to Home Project Manager personal habits, so it's good to make this an expectation for everyone."
"
— Team lead
Impact on the business
The feature was rolled out to all users over a year ago, and we were able to see great results that directly impacted the company's bottom line.
Great training tool
Increased the level of thoroughness across the board and raised expectations.
Reduced device offline rates
Device offline rates fell by 23%, allowing more people to access homes
Reduced operational costs
Less access issues led to less support calls and less follow-up repair visits.
