{"id":11810,"date":"2020-01-29T15:16:20","date_gmt":"2020-01-29T14:16:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/uxstudioteam.com\/?p=11810"},"modified":"2023-07-20T08:49:00","modified_gmt":"2023-07-20T07:49:00","slug":"user-research-magicbricks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/timemachine.uxstudioteam.com\/ux-blog\/user-research-magicbricks\/","title":{"rendered":"User Research For India’s Top Property Site – MagicBricks Case Study"},"content":{"rendered":"

MagicBricks<\/strong>\u00a0is the go-to platform to buy, sell and rent property in India. Every day, hundreds of thousands of people browse their website, mobile app and mobile site to find their dream home, an office for their business, or to sell or rent out their property. We conducted user research for the site and we will share what we’ve learned from it in the following case study.<\/strong>\"ux-research-magicbricks\"<\/b><\/p>\n

UX research-only project<\/b><\/h2>\n

4 years since their last major website redesign<\/a>, <\/span>MagicBricks were planning to revamp their entire platform<\/b>. With this revamp, senior management hoped to achieve a radical improvement in their user experience, as opposed to the incremental refinements they had been working on in recent times. Therefore, they wanted us to conduct an extensive UX audit<\/a>\u00a0<\/span>aimed at understanding the main problems their users were currently facing.<\/span>
\n\"magicbricks\"<\/p>\n

In order to get the full picture, we had to test the website, mobile app and mobile site, and find the main pain points for 4 different segments or types of users: buyers, tenants, owners, and agents.<\/span><\/p>\n

Furthermore, they wanted to launch a few additional services and asked us to validate the need for these services, as well as to explore different ways in which these services could be offered.<\/span><\/p>\n

How 2 UX researchers collaborated with 4 different UX teams<\/b><\/h2>\n

As a part of <\/span>The Times Group<\/span><\/i> of India, a large media conglomerate, MagicBricks operates in a rather corporate environment, with an established hierarchy and 4 different UX teams, each working on the product from the perspective of a specific segment.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

On our side, we were a team of 2 UX researchers from <\/span>UX studio<\/span><\/a>. Our main contact person was the Lead Designer, but we also worked closely with different members of each team, as well as 3 Project Managers, who facilitated the available quantitative data and gave us an overview of their goals for the product. <\/span>\"ux-design-research-team\"<\/b><\/b><\/p>\n

Understanding the cultural context and UX research challenges<\/b><\/h2>\n

The main UX research<\/a> challenges of this project included getting a good <\/span>understanding of a market that was unfamiliar to us<\/b> in a short amount of time, as well as <\/span>adapting to significant cultural differences<\/b> that impacted, not only our communication and collaboration with the client sometimes, but also the user tests and interviews. Additionally, the complexity of their multi-platform product, as well as the variety of user roles added a level of difficulty to the project.<\/span><\/p>\n

Finally, the nature of the Indian market and Magicbrick\u2019s business model sometimes opposed the user experience to the business goals, as some of the main obstacles in the way of an optimal user experience happened to be some of the company\u2019s major sources of revenue.<\/span><\/p>\n

Understanding the product<\/b><\/h2>\n

After the initial <\/span>kick-off meeting<\/b>, which served to establish the scope and general objective of the project, we had a series of <\/span>stakeholder interviews<\/b> to better understand the context of the project. Moreover, these interviews provided us different perspectives on the product and the market. <\/span><\/p>\n

In order to get the full picture, we talked to different members of the management board, for example, the CEO, the Head of Marketing, and the Head of Product. These people provided us with their understanding of the market and the medium to long-term vision of the company. Additionally, the CTO gave us information on the technical limitations. Last but not least, people from sales and customer support brought in the knowledge they had accumulated from the direct communication with the end-users.<\/span>
\n\"ux-research-methodology\"<\/p>\n

We also collected existing materials from <\/span>previous user research<\/b>, such as personas, tasks to be done, as well as usability tests. We also did our own <\/span>competitor analysis<\/b><\/a>, identifying differentiating features and services<\/span><\/p>\n

In order to have a better understanding of where potential pain points could likely arise, we ran a workshop for each segment or user role with the team that works on it, mapping out the <\/span>user journey<\/b><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

Then we discussed the data provided by <\/span>analytics<\/b> with different PMs to understand how users behave on the platform, which is the most popular features and to identify major drop-offs in the important funnels.<\/span><\/p>\n

Last but not least, before going to India, we let a couple of our designers at UX Studio review the platform and share their thoughts with us. These <\/span>expert reviews<\/b> cannot replace proper <\/span>usability testing<\/b><\/a>, but it helped us to spot some weaknesses in the current UI. With this, we could pay special attention to those parts when testing them.<\/span><\/p>\n

Conducting the research: user interviews and usability tests<\/b><\/h2>\n

The research plan and major pain points<\/h3>\n

Based on the information we had previously collected, we put together a research plan with the objectives of the UX research and the questions we wanted to answer. We then wrote scripts for each segment, aiming to answer these research questions.<\/span><\/p>\n

We conducted a total of 40 on-site interviews and usability tests, combining both research methods in 1 hour-long sessions. In the first part of our sessions, we focused on <\/span>understanding the challenges that users were facing, many of which were specific to the local context.<\/b>\u00a0<\/span>\"usertesting\"For example, a major pain point for people who were trying to buy or rent a property in India was the high presence on the different property sites of brokers. These brokers usually charge an extra commission and have a reputation for being very pushy and not trustworthy.\u00a0<\/span>However, as we dug deeper, we found out that these brokers are still useful in many cases. The real issue for the users was the following: they were afraid that their contact details would be shared with brokers without their consent.<\/span><\/p>\n

Local problems and solutions<\/h3>\n

Another good example of a problem, that is specific to the local context is that some cities are so big that many people don\u2019t even know the different districts by name. Therefore they prefer to see the distance from a reference point (e.g. their workplace or their parents\u2019 residence) to quickly understand if a specific location suits their needs.<\/span><\/p>\n

Besides, users typically don\u2019t know much about the different districts (even in their home city), they required more detailed information about the surroundings of the properties they were planning to visit.<\/span><\/p>\n

Usability testing and design-related problems<\/h3>\n

In the second part of our sessions, we gave our participants a few tasks to test the usability of the product. By this point, we uncovered the problems that were mostly design-related. Although the general usability guidelines and best practices to find usability issues are essentially the same anywhere in the world, we had to emphasize the fact that the negative and constructive feedback was more than welcome. Locals were naturally more inclined to share positive feedback.<\/span><\/p>\n

We also iterated on the tests every 2-3 days, removing the questions and tasks that did not provide useful insights or that provided insights that we had already validated. We had to replace them with other questions and tasks that helped us validate the new hypothesis we were coming up with during the research.<\/span><\/p>\n

Cultural differences<\/b><\/h2>\n

The following are some of the cultural differences we had to take into account when collaborating with a team in India:<\/span><\/p>\n