PARADE OF HOMES
Redesigning the home tour experience for the largest showcase of new and remodeled homes in the nation.
For 75 years, Parade of Homes has been the best place to discover new homes and styles for prospective homeowners. Presented by Housing First Minnesota, the Parade of Homes is the largest showcase of new and remodeled homes in the nation.
The Opportunity
Housing First Minnesota felt as though the previous app didn't do the Parade of Homes brand justice and left tour participants stuck with features that didn't work. As a result, the app was pulled from the app stores and users were left with a physical guidebook and desktop platform to plan their tours.
While the physical guidebook is a sacred and reliable resource for attendees, there were desired resources that only a digital platform can provide. This is where KRUTSCH came in.
The Outcome
The app serves as more than just a digital version of the guidebook. It allows users to not only browse homes based on their preferences, but also create home tour plans with an optimized route based on their location. Ultimately driving users to prefer the app over the physical guidebook
The Goal
Collaborating with Parade of Homes, KRUTSCH set out to resolve issues with the previous app and to give users features that were lacking in the physical guidebooks, while staying true to the Parade of Homes brand and legacy.
The Design Focus
We set out to design an app experience that was user centered and pushed the iconic Parade of Homes brand that has been well-known for 75 years. We heavily emphasized UI patterns commonly used in real estate apps and focused on refining key features users were looking for.
We also redesigned and built the Parade of Homes website using Webflow to match the visual language and feature set of the new apps.
The Development Focus
For the initial launch, our dev team migrated the legacy backend to Google Cloud Platform. This enabled us to streamline how we synced data to the native apps and to the Webflow CMS. Leveraging our experiences with prior low code approaches for clients, we chose to build the new website using Webflow to provide an elegant design that could be easily edited by members of the Housing First Minnesota team.
“We valued the small, dedicated team that invested time in understanding our project and tailoring each to a different audience... I was impressed with KRUTSCH's ability to present us with unique solutions to fairly complex requests from our team.”
— Laura Burt, Project Manager, Housing First Minnesota
Getting to Work
KRUTSCH began with a series of workshop sessions to understand the needs and goals Housing First Minnesota had for the mobile apps and website refresh.
Conducting a heuristic analysis gave us insight into areas in need of improvement, which were then confirmed through a series of user interviews.
The initial user interviews also revealed the primary desires of tour-goers, which were a digital guidebook that allows them to filter homes, view nearby homes, automatically optimize a home tour route based on their current location, and provide notes and ratings for each home.
With the features end users and Housing First Minnesota wanted, we outlined the workflow for the new apps. Workflows then led us to wireframes, where we mapped out where content would live on the screen. We then moved on to visual design.
Recognizing the importance of aligning the app with the Parade of Homes branding, our design team created a cohesive visual language, mood boards, and modern stylescapes.
With approval on visual language from Housing First Minnesota, we moved on to high-fidelity screens and prototyping in Figma.
With a prototype in hand, we headed into user testing to put our new design to test with real, prospective tour participants.
Armed with real user feedback, and through constant collaboration from the KRUTSCH design and dev teams, and Housing First Minnesota, we iterated as necessary to ensure that a product that would be useful for all users was built and deployed.
The Result
The newly launched website and mobile apps provide users with a mobile experience that is intuitive and gives them the key features that were previously missing.
At the same time, we ticked off the Housing First Minnesota wish list by bringing their brand back into a digital experience, providing detailed insight into tour participants through the use of app tracking (with end-user permission, of course). This enables Housing First Minnesota and their builders and remodelers key metrics into participants desires and housing trends.
