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Apartment Searching made Easier
SIMS 2006 Masters Final ProjectMelissa 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
TaskAnalysis
Task Priority
Specify…
High
Explore the Competition
Survey
Personas
TaskAnalysis
Task Priority
Specify…
High
CompetitiveEvaluation
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
JavaScript HTML + CSS
Craigslist
RSS feed (batch)
Transit info
Query Params HTTP GET
Apache Web Server
Client Web Browser
Result (XML)
Local BusinessSearch
Parsed Data
GeoodingService
Driving Directions
Design Iterations
26 miles 35 minutes20 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