As our product targets city and county government employees, we faced unique challenges as we couldn't conduct contextual interviews or observe them in their work environment, unlike other consumer-facing products.
By evaluating the strategies of our competitors, I was able to identify the strengths and weaknesses of their approach, which helped us identify areas of opportunity for our product and potential threats that needed to be addressed.
In addition, I reviewed the Request for Proposals (RFP) published by city and county governments, which provided valuable insights into the features and functionalities that users desire.
Based on the previous research, I developed mockups for our website and sales presentation, along with a prototype for The League of California Cities(city manager conference), allowing us to validate our assumptions and test initial design concepts.
Within 2 months, we developed and launched a minimum viable product that was tested by real users, allowing us to gather valuable feedback and gain a better understanding of our target audience.
Our success depends on two factors: whether we could provide accurate information on short-term rentals and whether users can make the most out of our data. The effective visualization of data is crucial to convey its meaning, and data can only be valuable when it is understandable to users.
It takes a lot of effort for our users to find what they need, and on top of that, they have to compare various datasets from short-term rental tracking and licensing to take enforcement actions.
By applying the "Live Now" and "STR" filters as default settings, our users can quickly locate the current properties operating as short-term rentals within their municipalities.
I applied the same filters by default on both the map and list views to ensure a consistent user experience. For more experienced users, additional columns and filters are available to further refine their data search.
With Rentalscape, we currently have ongoing contracts with 6 cities and counties, and we won 2 additional Requests for Proposals.
