General policy cost calculator — Homepage
Enrollment Flowchart
Enrollment flow and checkout experience — Website
Design System Component Library
Portal Redesign — Design system and components library
Portal Redesign — Design system and components library
1 Million Homes — Marketing
Rhino
2019 — 2021
Head of Design
Overview
Rhino tackles housing affordability through providing a security deposit insurance that satisfies the leasing requirement. This allows renters everywhere access to homes that may originally be unavailable due to large upfront sums of money to move into a home.
Over the course of 2 years at Rhino, we set to work on how might we improve the overall end-to-end experience. From resident adoption, onboarding experience, property management engagement, to cancellation and claims, the entirety of the journey matters.
Role
- Ran design department vision, roadmap, and strategic impacts that align with product roadmap and OKRs
- Lead conceptualization and building of product features, user experiences, and innovations for renters (consumers) and property owners/managers (partners).
- Collaborated closely with cross-functional teams leadership, including product management, engineering, and product marketing, to ensure alignment, coordinate efforts and outputs, and drive overall success
- Developed and managed budgets, timelines, and resources to ensure successful project delivery
- Developed and implemented design processes and methodologies to increase efficiency, improve collaboration, and ensure high-quality deliverables, resulting in increased productivity and improved outcomes for the design team
- Hired and managed a team of 8 designers, ensuring smooth onboarding, allocation of responsibilities, and career development
Selected Initiatives
Branding
Brand positioning, tone and voice, and messaging
Website
Marketing communication
Visual Identity Definitions
Brand look and feel
Marketing Material
Communications, case studies, white papers, emails, videos, and more
Enrollment Flows
Iterations
Portal Redesign
Internal (third party admin, customer success) and external (property managers and residents)
Design System
Components library and shared.js
Cancellation Flow
User flow improvement
Opportunity Research
Discovery
SMB Self Service
New feature
Checkout Experience
Iterations
Leasing App
0-1 product
Discovering Value Proposition
Before diving deep into opportunity areas, initiatives, projects, and business direction, we first defined the Rhino’s value proposition and product market fit. This allows for a cohesive strategic approach across departments that aligns with a strong stance and need in the market space.
The Big Three
Price, service, and convenience are the values that sets Rhino apart from its competitors.
Price? Rhino’s underwriting capabilities enables more renters to purchase a security deposit insurance despite the fact that the premium is greater than $0, non-refundable, and cost more than putting a cash security deposit down.
Service? Customer success teams at Rhino has scaled up to provide excellence service, but the true nature of the work is reactive versus preventative. Rhino’s product can provide a level of self service experience that targets the millennials audience, who are tech savvy and expects digital customer service.
Convenience? Access and convenience is seen as the greatest driver to product adoption when conducting product market fit analysis. The reason is that the target audience:
- Has better usage of a large sum of money
- Does not trust upfront money in landlords hands based on past experiences
- Want access to neighborhoods and housing options that may be traditionally not available to them
How would we win in the space?
- Play into convenience to increase product adoption
- Lean on service to increase customer lifetime value (LTV)
- Continuously improve pricing models to become the preferred provider
Research Takeaways
We have a unique position to define and build frictionless experiences that addresses the lifecycles of a renter’s leasing journey. Through time we have conducted product market fit research, user interviews, surveys, and usability testing to inform short and long term investments.
1. We are winning through our modern tools with landlords and property managers
100% of our landlords and property owners was impressed by our portal tool as it was a simpler modern experience compared to other tools they use on the daily (example: Yardi)
Decision? While we already excelled beyond user expectations with the experience of the existing owner portal experience. With the intention of scaling more users and units on platform, the existing infrastructure did not offer the ability to handle an uptick.
2. Landlords and property managers has varying objectives depending on their size of operation
While Rhino has built its experience to bring users into its platform, we have heard multiple feedback that buckets into:
- Retail customers looks forward to having access to an experience that aggregated information
- SMB customers prefers an platform that holds all information and is source of truth
- Enterprise customer prefers an API integration where Rhino works within their existing platform
3. A significant percentage of renters expressed interest in using Rhino once they understood the product offerings
In 2020, the idea of security deposit insurance was a new concept. Renters did not understand what it does, how to leverage it, and the difference between this versus renters insurance.
Decision? Efforts were placed in messaging our product offering on Rhino's website, landing pages, advertisements, social media presences, and more. The core metric for success is uptick in purchased policies and owners on platform.
Accomplishments
Within 2 years here are some successes Rhino achieved with the support and initiatives of the Product organization
1 Million Homes Rollout
Access to doors for renters across the United States
Renter’s Insurance
Generated $1M of revenue
BBB and Google Review Ratings
Improved overall ratings from Google Reviews from 3.5 to 4.5 stars
Rapid Growth
Grew to 4 product verticals addressing renter, landlord, and property manager concerns
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