Introduction
After renting two different summer internship apartments for 3 months at a time in NYC, I can appreciate the value in flexible furniture rental and reuse. Also, after spending many sweaty days helping friends move in and out of their college apartments, I can also understand how helpful it is to have professional movers, assemblers, and furniture cleaners. Feather is the ideal sustainable solution to these issues where a user chooses which curated pieces to rent or buy and can get those items quickly delivered and assembled, with options to change out or add more furniture.
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I chose to redesign features for Feather for the Kleiner Perkins Design Fellow application because I can personally relate to their mission and I feel I can add practical and valuable design solutions to the product.
User Research
To get a better picture of furniture rental users, I interviewed 3 young professionals. The median age of New York City renters is 23.5 years old, so focusing on this age group for user research can help Feather not only capture the largest age group of apartment renters, but also acquire customers early-on in their apartment rental journey to build a long-term furniture rental relationship.
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Here is a summary of the user interviews findings:​
Some of the main takeaways are:​
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People are inspired by what furniture they see in friends' apartments
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Furniture that is too big, cheap, or doesn't fit the aesthetic/size of their next apartment they discard or give away (*proof of concept for Feather!)
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People want furniture they know will fit and work in their apartment
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Researching quality furniture takes a lot of time and effort
Problem Statement
How might we reduce the time and effort of researching and renting apartment furniture for young professionals while ensuring aesthetic and size match?
Furniture Rental Competitive Analysis
While Feather has been named best furniture rental company for city dwellers, many other companies exist in the industry with different perks. Some of these other companies and their features include:
A competitive analysis shows each of the top furniture rental companies have somewhat similar offerings, so redesigning features for Feather is a great opportunity to set the company apart from others. Visually, Feather and The Everset are catering to a younger, more modern audience. For immediate places Feather can improve: CORT and BROOK offer many more filters than Feather, and The Everset is the only company that shows a user (through photographs) how to style and place its furniture packages in a room together.
Ideation
New pages and additions:
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On a product details page, add a section for reviews
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Also on the product details page, add a section to buy a $1 paper print with the real dimensions of that item so a user can tangibly see that product fit in their room
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New page for looking at your current and past furniture rentals with the ability to send a referral link for a furniture piece to a friend (if the friend then rents that item, you both get a discount)
4. New page when a user logs-in where they "design" their home/apartment dimensions and then can place various furniture pieces for rent in their real home layout
5. New loading page that emphasizes Feather's mission of sustainable and reusable furniture
Designs
Here are each of the 5 redesigns listed above.
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1 & 2. Reviews and $1 Product Blueprint (changes to an existing page)
Reviews from other renters build reliability for the items and reduce the time a user needs to conduct their own research or search for reviews on other websites. ​Also, sending a paper blueprint of the item for $1 (which covers the cost of postal mail) allows a user to imagine and buy into the item with minimal effort from Feather.
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3. Refer an Item (new page)
From the user interviews, people use furniture in their friends' apartments to inspire what furniture they get for their own home. By building in an incentive and page to refer furniture, Feather gains new customers and users can easily buy items they know they like.
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4. Home Layout (new page)
This new page allows users to input their home layout once, and then place true-to-size Feather furniture in the space. This page saves the previous session's home layout and placed furniture every time the user signs into their account. ​This reduces the hassle of needing to measure their space every time they buy something new or wrongly guessing that a furniture item will fit, as was a pain point for all of the users that were interviewed.
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5. Loading Page (change to an existing page)
On the About page, Feather describes how its mission is all about sustainable, well-made rental furniture that reduces waste. This is an amazing message, but it isn't shown anywhere else on their website. I changed their loading image and text to match this sentiment to remind users that they are doing good by shopping at Feather.
Conclusion & Next Steps
From the original problem statement, I was able to create designs that reduce the time and effort spent researching best furniture (reviews, refer an item page) and ensure it will be a perfect fit (home layout page, $1 blueprint). I also added the loading page change to emphasize the great, sustainable work that Feather is doing.
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For next steps, I would user test these design solutions with the users I originally interviewed to evaluate change in frustrations and how they use each feature. Additionally, I would expand research and testing to a broader age group and to other locations.