Trulia Agent Profile

    Summary
  
  Working with a cross-functional team, we implemented a complete redesign of the Trulia agent profile. Designs were informed by user research sessions that I observed, as well as Trulia's brand-new design system that was evolving (at the time). We also created a brand-new (to our platform) five-star review system, moving away from our previous method of displaying "recommendations."

Objective
The objective for the Trulia Agent Profile redesign was to update the visuals to our new design language, while surfacing more relevant information and converting from “recommendations” to a five-star review system.

Role
I was the sole designer, working with a product manager and engineering team. I also worked with our two user researchers to conduct interviews with consumers and agents about the profile and Find an Agent experience.

What the profile looked like before we started the redesign.

Getting Started

This project was going to serve two user sets for Trulia:

Consumers
Looking to find an Agent they can trust, who can help them purchase their dream home

Agents
Looking to represent themselves well and be competitive alongside other Agents in their markets

Our ultimate goal here was to create a successful connection between the two groups.

When researching, we also found that our Consumers were very interested in reviews. Based on this finding, I wanted to surface the agent’s star rating, in addition to the breakdown of individual skill ratings. I also wanted to include an open contact form prominently as this had been shown to convert well versus a contact button.

In our research we also found that Consumers were concerned if the Agent was "local" enough, as in, “Do they know my market? My neighborhood?” To address this we added a list of service areas (where the Agent does the most business) as well as their current and past listings, so the Consumer can get an idea of the types of properties and neighborhood the Agent deals with.

Wireframes & Initial Thoughts

Before I achieved the final profile design, I tried out a bunch of different layouts, and exposing different metrics. Initially I started in more of a wireframe environment and moved toward more visual mocks as I got more feedback and pieces of the project solidified.

Below are some process wireframes and mocks that show the progression of the design.

Final Design

Eventually we landed on a final design for the profile that included the major elements we set out to include (reviews, skill ratings, listings), but removed some of the elements that would have been more challenging to implement than we had time for (e.g. listing heatmaps, gamification elements).

Our Agents were excited for a more modern looking design, as well as the upgraded review format. The design was profiled in Inman (Trulia ups the stakes on agent profiles) making note of our improvements.

Private Profile

When an Agent is viewing their own profile, the default view became a private state with editing capabilities, similar to viewing your own profile on a social media page. The editing was intended to be WYSIWYG and would autosave as the user edited. The Agent would also have the capability to preview their public profile from the bar at the top of the page.

Another goal of this page was surfacing the profile completeness percentage prominently. Our data has shown that Agents with more complete profiles get more lead messages.

Writing Reviews

In changing from recommendations (which were basically just blurbs associated only with positive feedback and a 👍 icon) to star reviews, we had to create a new flow to post a review.

The first question in this flow determines the depth of experience a Consumer has had with an Agent. For example, a Consumer who never got in contact with an Agent wouldn’t be able to have a trustworthy opinion on anything besides that Agent’s responsiveness. The further along in the process a Consumer got with an Agent, the more skills we allow them to rate.