Ask Unlock

A searchable forum that lives alongside Unlock NYC’s chatbot tool to support voucher holders experiencing discrimination during their housing search in submitting complaints.

Role
UX Designer, Engineer

Employer
Unlock NYC

Areas
Research, Strategy, UX Copy, Implementation

Tools
Figma, Landbot.io, Airtable, Spacebook, 11ty

Background

Unlock NYC builds tools that make it easier for voucher holders to document and report source of income discrimination in their housing search. Both the reporting and recording tools take the form of a chatbot built using Landbot.io, which transfers user inputs to an Airtable base that generates a CCHR report. 

Through rounds of user testing and interviews that surfaced key pain points with the existing tools, it became clear that, along with updates to copy and user flows for the chatbot feature, the addition of a more self-directed experience was necessary in order to fully meet user needs.

Thus, Ask Unlock was born.

Development

After collecting user insights, the dual approach was to align on updates to the existing chatbot and define core requirements for the interactive forum:

  • Ease of navigation through a thoughtful and transparent information architecture

  • Flexible filter, search and tagging capabilities

  • A seamless and accessible way to add and review data (for our team of community experts)

Impact

The implementation of research-backed updates to existing features, as well as the net-new Ask Unlock forum led to

  • increased usage of the chatbot tool, thanks to the many connection points between both pillars,

  • a higher rate of report submission per chatbot interaction, linked to reduced drop-off during the journey, and

  • a significant reduction of complaints and requests logged through the chatbot.