House Swap

• https://forms.gle/fGhAbfJcRDyR4ub17

• Spring 2018

House Swap was a way to save money on housing for summer internships. A friend suggested this idea to me and asked me to determine its viability. The value hypothesis was that students from NYC would be interning in SF and students from SF would be interning in NYC, so they would be willing to live in the other's home for the summer and save thousands of dollars in rent.

Since user research required connections beyond my school (Cornell), I created a Google Form asking for basic demographics along with geographical questions, such as which city they live in and where they plan on interning this summer. The survey was just to find people for an interview over video chat later, not serving as the interview itself.

I posted the Google Form in four Facebook groups for people trying to find summer housing either in New York City or San Francisco. Seven people responded in total.

This idea would require a large network in order to succeed. Luckily, from the 7 people in the survey, we had one viable pair: one person who lived in San Diego was interning in NYC and a NYC native was interning in San Diego. During the interview, both people expressed intense discomfort with the thought of a stranger living in their household (even though this was mentioned on the form they filled out).

I feel that if that discomfort of strangers could be mitigated by humanizing the relationship, then this idea could be viable. There was likely discomfort with the idea of Uber or AirBnB, so I doubt whether this barrier is the end of the idea. While this is an interesting idea with potential, my friend never ended up pursuing it because he felt that the results from the MVP weren't positive enough.