This is a service design project that involves a physical touchpoints, digital components and a text-based chatbot to facilitate its application. We were assigned the housing sector and relevant personas to better explore the problem space and potential solutions. The service was designed with students in mind, UMSU (University of Melbourne Student Union) being the intended clients.
Our solution was a one-stop-shop service that would facilitate the full process of finding housing and roommates. Our service aims to address the following issues identified from our research…
Students who are new to the city lack information about accommodation options
Inaccessible services for various disabilities
Time-consuming logistics during the moving process, such as old and new furniture
Difficulty finding a compatible roommate and resolving conflicts in a living situation
Text-based Chatbot Development
Video Demonstration
The chatbot is key to the long-term maintenance of the platform by supporting students through the decision making process of house-hunting. There are two main branches of conversation, to help users 1) find housing or 2) a roommate.
Introducing Noah, named after the biblical character who built the Ark (finding housing) to house a pair of every species (finding roommates) during the Great Flood (Melbourne’s housing crisis).
Have a chat with Noah on Voiceflow →Conversational paths
Here's a look at our final screenshot on Voiceflow, showing the complexity of the conversational paths.
Design Process
We first started drafting using flowcharts. The development of our chatbot took 3 stages of iterations.
Basic but slightly vague structure, straight-forward interactions that focus on the core functions.
After feedback and testing, conversation pathing is perfected, with additional features added to chatbot.
Continued testing of error-handling and apply accessibility features; conversational language is beautified to be approachable, with behavioural science techniques.
The key challenge we had to overcome in designing our chatbot was error-handling. We had to consider the chaotic variety of user input, and how to collect only relevant information. We employed the AI feature on Voiceflow to format user input into variables, with conditions to rerun or redirect the user when their reply is invalid. These variables are later used in confirmation loops, which give users to resubmit responses if they made a mistake or changed their mind, while giving the impression that the bot is understanding the user.
Other Deliverables
Physical Touchpoint
Below is the customer journey map of our housing service.
We can set up many in-person events to connect people with potential roommates based on similiar hobbies and interests. For housing, we can arrange inspection groups, or other events for information regarding options outside of renting.
The map also leads to the next section for a design of the application paired with our service.
Digital Components
Here are a few wireframes to visualise the core functions and potential features of the service application.
