Redfin has a single way to mark homes that are interesting. Homebuyers frequently save homes for many different reasons then end up with a single list of hundreds, sometimes thousands of homes. Finding a particular home once it has been saved is like looking for a needle in a haystack. From user research, we found that home buyers would track their search with additional tools like notes app, spreadsheets, and shared text threads in addition to using Redfin since our tools were not enough.
The current viewing experience
An engaged user on Redfin can easily rack up thousands of saved homes in just a few weeks. Their favorites list would become a sea of houses that are difficult to sort through.
Through previous research we learned that users recall homes based on the photo above all else. We also observed users flipping through photos to a specific image on each home to compare kitchens or yards. We wanted to tackle these issues as a part of the project to make the viewing experience that much better.
This is a real account with 1000+ homes
Enter Lists
Instead of everything going into 1 list, how might we allow users to create their own categories of homes they are like?
Lists Hub
The lists hub is a new interstitial page before you dive into a list of homes. It contains Redfin auto-generated lists (like past toured homes) and user created lists. From here, users can share, rename, delete, or create a new list. A new user will always have 1 list here to start adding homes to, and once they've started touring homes, we'll create a list of their previously toured homes.
Homes page
Once inside, users can filter homes based on active or sold, and sort by many dimensions (price, $/sqft, beds, time on market etc.) The home cards are as big as is reasonably possible based on user feedback and behavior. Now a user can see more homes at once, allowing them to compare photos and recall saved homes easier.
Saving homes
One of our major concerns in the beginning was introducing friction in the home saving process. Upon looking at the data (I picked up SQL to pull this data myself!) I learned that a given registered user saves 30 homes a month, or 1 per day on average. Allowing a user to triage the home they are saving immediately is worth added friction since the volume of saving is very low.
To keep the experience feeling lightweight, we opted for controls on desktop and mobile web that would both keep the user in context of the action they just took, and, for mobile place the controls in a reachable area.
Mobile saving flow
To accomplish the goal of a lightweight feeling on mobile we used a drawer component that put the list options in a thumb-friendly area. A home can be saved to many lists or just 1 and can be removed the same way it was added: by interacting with the heart icon.
Testing
I tested 2 versions of lists 1 year apart. The initial version (1 above) was a concept test. We asked users how they save homes today, how do they categorized them, how do they keep track of changes, and if the list feature would help them accomplish their goals or not. There was almost a unanimous opinion from participants that our list concept would help them in their home search. The "viewing" experience didn't have any issues, but the saving interaction still needed some work.
A year later I tested a more polished version of the saving interaction. I tried new iconography to see if a different icon would convey organization/saving better than a heart. Additionally having 2 icons means you can choose when you want to organize or not. In each of the 3 tests users understood the system, allowing us to choose the version we preferred best—the simplest version with 1 icon.
Bookmark icon to organize, heart to save immediately to Favorites
Bookmark icon to organize, heart to save immediately to Favorites
Only 1 icon to organize homes
Given the obvious user need and the clear cut testing results, shipping this project should be a no-brainer. As things sometimes happen, it got backburnered and was kept there for many years. In 2023 the team finally brought it to market and you can now create favorite lists on Redfin!