Andrew Jones
← Design explorations

Zillow Usability Testing and Redesign

An unsolicited usability teardown of Zillow's iOS app, prompted by house-hunting frustrations of my own.

Several of the issues identified here have since been addressed by Zillow independently.

Before-and-after comparison of Zillow's filtering UI following the usability-tested redesign

When my wife and I were house-hunting after our first baby, we both ran into friction using Zillow's app. I wondered if it was just us, so I ran a usability test, interviewing seven people (five is usually enough to surface most issues) as they worked through two scenarios: searching within a $900K budget, then adjusting to a $5M one.

Two primary issues stood out, among several found

  • 01Non-intuitive filtering
  • 02A confusing price slider
Annotated screenshot of Zillow's original filter screen, marking specific points of user confusion around applying filters and the price slider
What I observed in the original app.

I built a proto-persona and task flow from a National Association of Realtors survey, categorized what I'd seen into recurring themes, then sketched alternative solutions on paper before building a clickable prototype in Marvel.

Sticky notes categorizing usability observations into themes like applying filter, price slider, and nearby button
Synthesizing observations into recurring themes.
Annotated screenshot of the redesigned filter screen, replacing the price slider with dropdowns and adding a clear call-to-action button
The redesign: dropdowns instead of a slider, one clear call-to-action.
A walkthrough of the redesigned prototype.

I re-tested the prototype with seven new participants running the same two tasks. This time, none of the original issues showed up.

Chart showing the number of participants who ran into each issue before versus after the redesign, dropping from four or five out of seven to zero

Zillow may have had reasons for their original design I couldn't see as an outsider, but the before/after comparison was a clean piece of evidence that the changes worked.