During Grupo ZAP’s innovation week in 2020, we raised the hypothesis that offering property search through a map would bring more satisfaction and better usability than the list view alone, which was how the ZAP Imóveis portal worked at the time.
I interviewed users who had already searched online for a property to buy or rent. We found that all of them, after finding a listing, copied the address and pasted it into Google Maps to see the exact location. This gave us strong evidence that the solution would solve a real problem users faced on the portal.
Our benchmark showed that many competitors already used this feature as the default when displaying search results.
The goal was to build a prototype of this feature in one week, using the Design System to speed up the process. We reached this result just by reorganizing and reusing existing components.
I used a toggle button to make it clear that the map can be turned on and off. When the user scrolls, the applied filters stay fixed at the top, giving them visibility and control to remove or edit any of them. This updates both the search results and the pins on the map.
The experiment was tested with a share of users. To measure adoption and satisfaction, we defined two metrics: how often users turned Map view on and off, and engagement with listings, such as messages sent, photo clicks and favorites.
Today, map search is available in the ZAP Imóveis app, which confirms the direction our research pointed to in 2020: when people search for a home, location is central to the decision.
Below are the prototype screens in more detail: é possível ver as telas do protótipo com maior detalhe:
