Apartment Searching made Easier SIMS 2006 Masters Final Project Melissa Chan, Irina Lib, Kavita Mittal, Sarah Poon Adviser: Marti Hearst
Motivation
Profile Apartment Hunters Survey
Characterize User Needs Survey Personas
Assign Priorities to Common Tasks Survey Personas Task Analysis TaskPriority Specify … High
Explore the Competition Survey Personas Task Analysis TaskPriority Specify … High Competitive Evaluation
HousingMaps
Apartments.com
Low-Fidelity Prototype
Suggested Area Needs Assessment
Suggested Area Needs Assessment Results
Data Sources HomeSkim
Craigslist
Data Sources
Yahoo Local
Google Maps - Driving Times & Distances
System Architecture MySQL Parsing engine (PHP/Perl) Query Engine (PHP) User Interface AJAX Engine JavaScriptHTML + CSS Craigslist RSS feed (batch) Transit info Query Params HTTP GET Apache Web Server Client Web Browser Result (XML) Local Business Search Parsed Data Geooding Service Driving Directions
Design Iterations
26 miles 35 minutes 20 miles 27 minutes
Future Directions Enhancements –Increase geographic scope –Add data for neighborhood safety, school district Additional Applications –Can be easily extended to other scenarios: Finding convenient meeting spots (central to geographically dispersed people) Extension to other kinds of listings (car sales etc) –Adapt to a cell phone application Use GPS to find available apartments/homes in the area