Community Finder
Community Finder exists to simplify the home search process for those looking to find their perfect master-planned community. The vision of Community Finder is to become the only resource homebuyers need to find the right place for their next home. To achieve this, we knew we would need an experience that felt intuitive, simple, and enjoyable for our users.
While many in the market for a new home turn to realtors or friends for advice in their search, more and more are turning to the Internet to assist. Sites like Zillow and Redfin are great at showcasing individual homes but not as strong at featuring communities as a whole. In our real estate experience, we’ve seen that it’s often the community that initially hooks the buyer, before they ever see a home. We came alongside the CF team to support their mission and vision to bring a platform to life that would aggregate robust community profiles in one place and support our audience’s search process.
Prior to the rebrand to Community Finder, the platform existed as the less-robust Real Estate Scorecard (RES), a site dedicated to aggregating community information with a specific emphasis on ‘scoring,’ including unbiased ratings from the company after annual due diligence trips AND reviews and ratings from real homeowners in the communities. The challenge was to preserve and continue the efforts of the best parts of RES while updating the interface for a modern audience and streamlining the search and filter process for the user.
Before setting out to ideate on new features and ways to update the platform, we wanted to be clear on our users’ goals and preferences.To do this, we crafted a survey for recent Real Estate Scorecard users on their buying journey (timeline, region, price point) as well as their search priorities and goals. We combined the insights gleaned here with robust competitive research to determine where to spend our energy on development of features and what content to keep from the old site. Additionally, we looked to best-in-class examples in searching, like Airbnb, for inspiration on their UI, filters, and home profiles. With a small team, we wanted to take advantage of the research that goes into their platform and determine how to apply the learnings to ours.
From our research, we determined that our demographic tended to be older, 55+, typically searching for pre-retirement or retirement master-planned communities. To best serve this audience, we wanted our UI to be very image-forward and use large, clear typography. All color palette combinations were thoroughly checked for accessibility standards to ensure the best experience for our aging users. Additional considerations were provided for tablet and mobile breakpoints, as our users self-reported about a half and half use of desktop versus mobile devices.
After research, determination of functional requirements, and UX UI work, our design and development leveraged the data from the old Real Estate Scorecard platform to power the refreshed, more intuitive front-end of Community Finder.
Work
See our work at work in the world, and learn about the results we’ve achieved working with brand and marketing leaders like you.
