This case study highlights the redesign and AI integration of Zillow, a leading real estate platform, to create a more personalized and user-friendly experience. The project involved developing AI-powered features like personalized home recommendations, an interactive virtual tour assistant, and a neighborhood insights chatbot.
Project Type
AI Features Design
Role
UX Designer
Tools
Figma
Zillow is a leading online real estate marketplace that provides users with tools and data to buy, sell, rent, and manage properties. It offers property listings, home value estimates (Zestimates), mortgage calculators, and neighborhood insights.
"How might we leverage AI to make Zillow more dynamic, user-friendly, and personalized, so users can make informed decisions about buying, renting, or managing properties with ease?"
Sneak Peek into the Solution
Personalized home recommendations
Tailored property suggestions based on user preferences
Virtual home tours
Enhanced with AI-driven Q&A
Neighborhood insights
Real-time community information
Limited personalization in home recommendations
Lack of interactive tools and real-time assistance
Inadequate tools for assessing neighborhood suitability.
Competitive Analysis
Key findings:
Redfin offers dynamic neighborhood insights but lacks personalized recommendations.
Realtor.com excels in AI based property recommendations but lacks interactive virtual tours.
Trulia offers great map-based features but lacks an AI chatbot for user queries.
Opportunity
Integrate these strengths into a unified, AI-driven Zillow experience
Data Gathering
Proposed Designs
The floating AI chatbot provides seamless assistance, helping users navigate listings, compare properties, and get answers on demand.
The Zilo AI Chatbot is designed as a floating, collapsible widget positioned in the bottom-right corner for easy access. With a clean conversational layout, clickable links to curated listings, and a smart input box for real-time AI responses, it seamlessly blends into Zillow’s blue and white branding while keeping the interface non-intrusive.
Users can engage with Zilo AI Chatbot to receive personalized home recommendations, explore curated listings and refine their search based on preferences like budget, location and home features.
The combination of immersive virtual tours and Zilo AI Chatbot will create a seamless, intuitive home-buying experience, providing users with instant insights and interactive property exploration.
The Explore Neighborhood tab will help users make informed decisions about their potential homes and it provides detailed insights about the neighborhood. It includes key information on nearby schools, commute times, local amenities, crime rates and market trends.
AI Prompt Design & Iterations
The AI chatbot prompts and designs were iteratively tested with users, gathering valuable feedback to improve the overall experience. Initial designs relied primarily on text-based responses, but through testing, several key areas for enhancement emerged.
Key Findings
Inclusion of Images
Underlined Links
More Detailed Information
Like & Share Options
Opportunity
The feedback presented an opportunity to enhance the AI chatbot by integrating images, underlined links, detailed insights, and interactive features, creating a more engaging and intuitive home-buying experience.
Learnings
Working on this project reinforced the importance of AI-driven automation in enhancing user experience. The integration of an AI-powered chatbot made home searches more interactive and efficient, reducing friction in the decision-making process.
I realized how personalization plays a crucial role in user engagement—tailoring recommendations and insights based on user preferences significantly improved the relevance of search results.
Additionally, continuous iteration and user feedback were essential for refining the chatbot’s responses and UI design. Every improvement brought us closer to a seamless, intuitive, and user-friendly experience, making Zillow AI a smarter real estate assistant.
This project highlighted how technology, design, and AI can work together to simplify complex processes and improve user satisfaction.
