Project Description
FivePoint real estate has communities in Irvine and Santa Clarita, offering community, exclusive amenities, and events that aim to foster a strong sense of belonging for their residents. Our team examined the key areas of service at Valencia and wanted to focus on attracting prospective home seekers into the community.
With Valencia's rich history, both past and present, we reimagined their self-guided tour using AR to showcase the history as well as the amenities offered. Our goal is to promote the AR tours to encourage visitors to explore the model homes and discover artifacts that highlight Valencia's history in their model homes.
ROLE
UX design, Graphic design, Research, and Writing
TIME FRAME
Design Sprint | Spring 2024
TEAM
Hunter Moranville, Celso Pereira, Xander Turnbough
Subject Matter Experts: Matt Wilkin and Paige Glasser
Problem
FivePoint Valencia offers self-guided tours to visitors, allowing them to explore various model homes available for homebuyers. From smaller homes like Calla to larger homes like Crimson, these tours provide prospective buyers with an opportunity to get a feel for the space before diving into the home buying process. However, through our field observations, we identified several limitations in the current tours. They can lack interactive and engaging elements, sufficient information, facts, and historical context about Santa Clarita. As a result, the current tours may not fully capture the essence of the FivePoint community, and our goal is to convey the unique aspects to get visitors to buy into the community. To address this, we aim to enhance the self-guided tour experience using AR features that showcase detailed information, facts, and history about Santa Clarita at key points within the homes.
Insights
Through our field observation, we discovered several key insights about the current self-guided tours and their potential for improvement. First, there are numerous artifacts, such as booklets and flyers, available in and outside of the homes that provide information about the community and its amenities. However, the existing materials primarily focus on community amenities and could be expanded to include additional valuable information for prospective homebuyers.This presents an opportunity to enhance FivePoint's existing information with details about nearby schools, hospitals, and attractions like Six Flags in Santa Clarita. By expanding the content of the self-guided tours, we can offer visitors a richer, more informative experience.
Solution
An upgrade to FivePoints current self-guided tours, our solution offers an immersive and interactive AR tour for visitors of the model homes. When visitors enter a home, they can use their mobile devices to scan and explore the AR world, providing information about the house amenities, scanning physical cards to learn more about the history of Santa Clarita. Furnished model homes would include contextual information; for example, the kids' room would provide details about nearby schools, while placed artifacts would offer historical and local information about Santa Clarita.
SME Interviews + Fieldwork
To learn more about the FivePoint community, we spoke to Paige Glasser, Director of Marketing, and Matt Wilkin, Community Manager of FivePoint Valencia. In our discussion, we learned about FivePoint holding events for residents and visitors to promote the Valencia community. The goal of FivePoint is to encourage people to buy into the community and foster a sense of togetherness, as FivePoint is built to provide a shared space for people to interact and get to know each other.
Observations + Journey Map
Our team visited both FivePoint locations in Santa Clarita and Irvine to observe the services offered in the community. Xander and I went to the Valencia location, and upon entering, there is a community porch where visitors can check in with the community manager and learn about the homes and gather information about the community.
We noticed an abundance of signage throughout the community. One piece of signage promoted self-guided tours. Scanning the QR code took me to a page to schedule a tour of model homes and provided information on the pricing models of the homes they offer.
Insights
01| Some signage felt forced and seemed more aimed at visitors than at the residents already living there. The play area is nice but unremarkable, yet the signage exaggerates its features.
02| The appointment scheduling for self-guided tours is inconsistent. It offered me a tour for the next day with a passcode, yet a self-tour sign on the door did not require a passcode to enter the model home.
03| Public amenities like restrooms were not accessible without a resident key. This can be an obstacle for visitors touring the area and for residents who may not be carrying their key.
(Click image to view our Journey Map)
Concept Poster
Through the creation of concept posters, we were able to sketch out our ideas with rough drafts of storyboards and get a general idea of how we could improve and redesign the service experience at FivePoint.
(View team concept posters)
Our redesigned AR tour would help homebuyers learn more about the area and space, visualize furniture placement, and customize the current features of the home.
Investigative rehearsal + Service Blueprints
Walking through our concept, we acted it our scenes with a scenario: a prospective home buyer is interested in Five Points homes, and the community manager recommends trying out the new AR tour, which guides the user throughout the home.
Mapped out the vistors journey at FivePoint at location location and through digital contact of the AR tour. (Click image view our design process)
Insights from Homebuyers
Interviewing homebuyers, we interviewed new homebuyers Josh and Anne to discuss the challenges of buying a home and what technology would be helpful with the homebuying process.
Josh and Anne are recent homeowners.
Purpose
Their initial reasons for buying a home was avoiding rent and finding a place to settle down and raise a family. This offers stability to new families looking for the best nearby schools, restaurants, and health services within the area.
Thoughts on AR tour
Josh and Anne are not fully opposed to the idea of an AR tour, though it can be a bit awkward to tour a house needing your phone. They would like to see inspection points within the home, proximity to schools, learn more about the nearby communities, and touchpoints of the amenities offered within the home.
Market Research
Concerns of schools and other amenities are brought up in a forum discussing the layout of Santa Clarita and the way FivePoint is built.
Wireframes and UI
The app will scan the AR card which introduces the activation of the tour and information cards are available to view through interactive audio recordings and facts about Valencia.
Physical cards
The physical cards are placed on appliances and decor, projecting different layout in the model homes.
App Features
Reflection