In August 2016, Swishers living in the San Francisco Bay area had the opportunity to solve a problem that they were very familiar with: housing.

One of the main pain points of a generation that has decided to focus on experiencing instead of owning.

Millenials are individuals born between 1980 and 2000. They are a specific consumer cohort with its own codes and consumer patterns: They are often urban and highly digital. Social interactions and community are dominant values of their lifestyle. They emphasize access versus ownership, and this is transcribed in their housing choices too.

Our client, AAA, is an American insurance company. Their product portfolio allows people to ensure their cars, homes, and life. The company’s mission is to help people worry less and live more.

When the innovation team from AAA contacted us, they presented us with their challenge: AAA believed their products could also help a younger and more affluent target. To be able to reach such target, they needed a product that would interest and serve them.

The best way to get in touch with the target was clear: apps, the central tool Millenials use on a daily basis, several times a day.

AAA commissioned Swish to create an app that would bring value to Millenials by solving a major pain point: housing.

Romm8 - transforming house hunting into a community-based experience.

The concept.

The main goal of the app was to offer a tool everyone could use, from the comfort of their phone, to easily and quickly find a room in a house that would fit their needs and wants.

More specifically, the app would connect users with their next roommate. By using a variety of indicators, the app generates suggested matches with whom the user can interact by an in-app direct messaging feature.

In the hottest housing market in the country, finding a house is so hard that one is often compelled to choose anything and lower their expectations.

Having some Swishers from the Bay Area itself, we knew how much of a hustle it was. But we also had high expectations and a vision: everyone should be able to come back to a house they like, with people they get along with, based on their personal lifestyle and preferences.

Project Kick-Off:

Every project we take-on starts with a scoping phase which allows both client and the Swish Project Manager to deep-dive into the business objectives of the project. We wanted to build an app that would represent the vision and the value AAA was looking to deliver to the target group.

“Making sure we have a thorough knowledge of our client’s vision, needs and objective allows us to deliver the best products, products that people will love.”

The scoping phase is ended by a Statement Of Work, a detailed recap of the discussions we’ve had with the client and sealing our collaboration on the project.

The Project Manager then picks from our network of talent the members who are the perfect fit for the project.

Swishers are experienced and specialized. When a PM assembles a team, they make sure they check availability and skill set fit with the project. We are then able to start working within the following 24 hours.

We assembled a team of top developers and delivered high-quality work within a short 12-week window.

Design.

In the world of applications, design is key to the adoption of the product by end users.

The UX designer starts with a navigational wireframe, the first template showing the user journey in the app. Wireframes were presented to the AAA team and discussed jointly.

We deliver at each iteration, and we use clients needs, specs and project goals to set up the best UX.

Followed several rounds of wireframing and usability tests. We wanted to create an app that has a comfortable and natural flow for best user experience and high retention.

Beyond visual design, we also gave a lot of thinking to the content. In the case of Room8, the concept of the app was to use filters in order to help the user find the best listing.

Obvious filters such as price and location came quickly. But we wanted more.

“How can we refine the filters in order to create a tool that delivers tailored recommendations. An app that helps you find not just a room in a house, but a place you can call “home.”

We came up with a concise and relevant list of filters.

The user would fill in the form with their criterion, and the app would offer a list of potential matching roommates.

Each user has a profile with more information about themselves: their activity, life situation, lifestyle and preferences, like Sally who is in a relationship, can live with pets, can live with smokers but can’t handle a dirty place.

User profiles include people looking for a room and people offering a room and looking for roomates.

The app is easy to use and straightforward: users enter details about themselves and their lifestyle which allows the app to make consistent recommendations.

Swish delivered the final app 16 weeks after the start of the projects.

Maintenance: Not a client, a partner.

The finalized app was submitted to the app store for end users to download it. Swish took care of maintenance and continued to add features based on what customers wanted. Today, we are still collaborating with AAA, mainly adding new features to the app.

Latest feature: http://recordit.co/8FpopATBL8

We love the projects we work on and consider our clients as partners: 90% of our clients become long-term partners.

Results.

150,000 users used the App. The App is ranked in the top 100 in the Lifestyle App Store Category (out of 200,000 apps).* The AAA innovation project team got significantly more funding - internal buy-in.

Our takeaways.

Nothing inspires us more than building a solution to “real life” problems - it is actually one of our project selection criteria.

We were very excited to help young active people find a house they could call home while respecting their lifestyle and preferences. There’s no joy in living in one of the coolest cities in the world if it is to stay in a house you don’t enjoy.

The Room8 app is available on the AppStore for flat share hunters in the Bay area.

This Swish Story was brought to you by the Apps team at Swish. We create awesome apps for businesses. Let's chat!