Senior Product Designer / Associate Product Manager（Hybrid – Design Focus）

TL;DR

• Reframed roommate matching from a listing-based flow to a trust-driven experience
• Identified trust as primary barrier → redesigned flow to reduce early friction
• Balanced safety vs exploration → increased engagement in listing browsing
• Defined monetization via verification + messaging gating

Overview

Roommate matching is not a listing problem—it is a trust problem.

This project reframes roommate search into a trust-first matching system—balancing safety, user behavior, and realistic business constraints.

Core Product Insight

Behavioral data revealed a key tension:

users needed trust to take action, but requiring trust upfront created friction before value was established.

To address this, we shifted from a verification-first model → browse-first experience, allowing users to explore freely while gating high-intent actions like messaging.

This transformed the product into a progressive trust-building system, improving early engagement while maintaining safety.

Product & Scope

Roommate is a profile-driven matching experience designed to help users find compatible roommates through lifestyle signals, verification, and controlled communication.