Part II- Design and User Research
Wireframe for Realytics- Your personalized investment tool
Why does investment make sense now?
The unemployment Rates in Allegheny County are very low. This tells us that the economy is doing well and that the people have a lot of purchasing power. All of it are good signs suggesting that ther Return on Investments would be high.
Residential User
A potential home buyer/owner might be looking at House prices across all Zipcodes and the Crime rates in the neighbourhood that he’s willing to invest in. A higher price a lower crime rate might indicate a higher growth rate, but he/she/they would be more concerned with house prices than Crime Rates. Hence the house prices are given a weight of 75% and Crime Rate 25% to come up with the following map.
Commercial Developer
A commercial developer or apartment complex developer might be more interested in the areas that’re booming with a high value of Building Permits as they are an indicator of the economic health of a region. They would also be concerned with the Median House Prices in the region as they won’t be able to sell their office spaces/apartments at a rate way higher than the existing rates in the neighbourhood. Hence the Building Permits and Median House prices are weighted at 60% and 40% respectively.
Restaurant & Small Business Owner
A restaurant or small business owner on the other hand would be concerned about all 3 factors. They would want to invest in an area that’s booming(meaning medium to high home prices), easy to obtain permits to operate their business and has a low crime rate so that they get more traffic/customers in their business. Based on these concerns a weight of 40% has been asigned to building permits, 30% to House prices and 30% to the Crime Index as shown below.
How to use the Tool
The visualisations below is a fully customizable version of the ones above. Tweaking the parameter weights according to your requirements will give you a map of Pittsburgh with the best zipcodes for your investment.
Negative Crime Index- Sliding this scale to the right will give you the best zipcode in terms of lowest crime rate House Price Index- Sliding this scale to the right will give you the best zipcode with the highest house prices Permit Index- Sliding this scale to the right will give you the best zipcode with the highest value of building permits
Customizable Graph
Wireframe Continued
User Research Protocol
I’ve identified 3 main categories of users the Realytics tool will be useful for. So I have tried to interview potential and current home owners to understand what factors are important to them when they consider buying a house. I have also tried to interview small business owners/restaurant owners to understand their perspective on the factors that affect their decision making when it comes to investing in a certain region. Sadly, I was unable to get a hold of any commercial real estate developers for their take. The interview script, inferences and changes made to the visualizations are listed down in the below sections.
Interview Transcripts and Feedback
Process: I ask the interviewee to take a look at the wireframe and form their initial judgement. I later explain what I’m trying to do so that they have a more holistic picture in mind and note down their suggestions. Their responses are paraphrased below. I add additional actions from my end apart from the questions in paranthesis.
Interview #1- Local Restaurant Owner
Q1: Do you understand what this tool is for? If not, what’s confusing about it?
Answer:
Something related to Real Estate.
Q2: What kind of user are you?
Answer:
I guess I’d be a mix of Residential & Small Business Owner. I might be able to use this tool to figure out where I can open up a restaurant or where I can buy a cheap house.
Q3: Do you agree with the weightages of parameters specified? What would you change?
Answer:
The weightages are fine, but there are a lot of variables that’re not included in this. Like when I’m buying a house, I’d look for it’s proximity to a school, property taxes, etc. Actually, next to the house price, the school rating is the most important criteria for me.
Q4: What else do you wish you saw in this tool?
Answer:
A map for the best school districts in Pittsburgh.
Q5: Any other ideas or suggestions to make this tool better?
Answer:
Try to incorporate property taxes for business owners, proximity to school, etc.
Interview #2- Local Resident(Pittsburgh Native for 38 years)
Q1: Do you understand what this tool is for? If not, what’s confusing about it?
Answer:
No, you tell me what this is for.
(I describe the tool and how to use it)
Q2: What kind of user are you?
Answer:
I don’t think I’d be any kind of user. I don’t have money to buy a house or start a restaurant/business.
Q3: Do you agree with the weightages of parameters specified? What would you change?
Answer:
If I had money to buy a house, I’d be looking at other data like gentrification. This place used to be cheap all around. Now they’re forcing people like us out of the places that we’ve lived in for years by raising the standard and cost of living. And it’s not going to stop anytime soon. Look at what happened in Lawrenceville. If I had to, I’d buy land and not a house and then sell it for profit when the gentrification process reaches that part. But if I were buying house, I’d look at factors and data that isn’t available publicly. Like neighbours, access to elevator, options for grocery shopping etc. With public data, I’d look at schools that I can send my children to if I bought a house in a specific Zipcode. Also, areas with low crime rates are preferred.
Q4: What else do you wish you saw in this tool?
Answer:
Land prices would be a welcome addition that indirectly determines the area’s economic health. But ultimately, I’d base my investment decision on what I see, not what some tool tells me. I know where I want to invest and that’s in Wilkinsburg. Because that’s where the development is going to go. There are a lot of abandoned spaces and cheap houses there that you can revamp and sell for a profit. (I explain that’s similar to what I’m doing as the revamp process includes getting Permits and that’s how you can identify regions that’re developing) Oh Okay. So I can use your tool to find other areas in Pittsburgh where they are issuing a lot of permits and then try to see if there are investment opportunities there. That’s useful, I guess.
Q5: Any other ideas or suggestions to make this tool better?
Answer:
None.
Interview #3- Local Business Owner of a grocery store
Q1: Do you understand what this tool is for? If not, what’s confusing about it?
Answer:
Let’s talk about it. Why don’t you explain it to me briefly and then I’ll tell you what I think about it.
(I describe the tool and how to use it)
Q2: What kind of user are you?
Answer:
Out of the 3 categories, I think I’ll fall into the small business Owner Category.
Q3: Do you agree with the weightages of parameters specified? What would you change?
Answer:
It doesn’t matter. The market is saturated so much in Shadyside and Oakland regions. I would concentrate on buying a house in a place with a higher crime rate and hold on to it for a long time. Over time, the crime rate is bound to go down and the price would go up earning me a profit. (I explain how he can do that using my tool and he nods)
Q4: What else do you wish you saw in this tool?
Answer:
I wish I didn’t see the Permits. Getting permits is easy. Finding a good house/land to invest in is difficult.
Q5: Any other ideas or suggestions to make this tool better?
Answer:
I don’t have any. Wish you all the best with whatever you’re trying to do.
Interview #4- Pittsburgh Home Resident(20 years)
Q1: Do you understand what this tool is for? If not, what’s confusing about it?
Answer:
Yes it is a tool to rank zipcodes based on things like crime rate, housing prices etc. for investments. Why do you show the unemployment rate for all the counties just to show the zipcodes in Allegheny County? (I answer that I am bulding the tool only for zipcodes mainly in Allegheny County as that’s where all the development is coming up and is the most sought out investment areas) (I describe the tool and how to use it in detail after this)
Q2: What kind of user are you?
Answer:
I think I’ll fall into the potential home owner category. So I would categorize myself as the Residential user.
Q3: Do you agree with the weightages of parameters specified? What would you change?
Answer:
Yes it makes sense. But why does it not add up to a hundred? (Because I’ve build a simple tool which does not restrict the user from selecting weights that add up to 100. The calculation weighs each parameter based on the ratio of their weight to the sum of the weights chosen)
Q4: What else do you wish you saw in this tool?
Answer:
The methodology for the calculations should be explained. How is crime calculated? School Rate? Permits? House Prices? How does the Ranking work? What if I want to look at the neighbouring zipcode for where the development is happening?
(I’ll add a section explaining methodology. You can hover your mouse over your top ranked zipcodes to figure out the zipcode closest to that one and focus your investment decisions on that area. My graphs show you details for the top 5 zipcodes. But my excel sheet shows you the complete data for your perusal.)
Q5: Any other ideas or suggestions to make this tool better?
Answer:
Can you add more data about the whole of Allegheny County? Why are there gaps in between? (Adding more data isn’t very feasible as most of the zipcodes are already saturated with investments. The gaps are there because the data is only shown for zipcodes with non zero house prices. Chances are no investment opportunities exist in the zipcodes with no colour.)
I’d be more interested in the Age demographics per zipcode too. To add more variability, you could focus on what each age group would look for in a zipcode. Young people would be interested in the number of bars in the neighbourhood and older people would be more interested in the cultural spots, schools and restaurants around their area of interest. (If you zoom in enough, you’ll be able to see the establishments in the zipcode you’re considering. Also this tool is only a preliminary tool to help you narrow down the zipcodes in your search for an investment region. Further research on who your neighbours are going to be, how loud the neighbourhood gets on weekends, the number of stairs you’ve to climb, etc. has to be undertaken before finalizing any decision.)
No other suggestions from my end. I love the fact that you can play aorund with the weights so as to generate a customized experience for each individual. I think that adds a lot of value to your whole project.
INFERENCES
- Add an attribute for School Rating that the user can tweak based on his needs(It came up in two separate interviews).
- Permits are not at all very important for restaurant/small business owners. Chances are they’re constrained by the budget available to them to even consider buying anything where the development is happening.
- Add section explaining the methodology of rank calculation(Lends more credibility to the visualizations).
- Build the story around Allegheny County and explain why I am choosing to focus on it.
- Adding land prices, property taxes per zipcode isn’t feasible and doesn’t add much value because they’re implicitly taken care of in the other features like House prices and Building Permits.
Revised Wireframe and Visualizations
- Elaborate more on why Allegheny County is focused on after the Unemployment Chart
- Add a methodology and calculations section just after Unemployment Rate section to describe what goes on behind the screen.
- Change weightages for Small Busines Owners. Downweight permits a bit and add more to crime weights.
- Update visualizations with School Rating as shown below
PART I- The Idea
PART III- Final Data Story
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