Manufactured Home Buying Process

challenge & outcomes

We aimed to understand the key processes, transactions, and roles of different stakeholders within the MH industry in order to identify key opportunities to support MH as one solution to the affordable housing crisis.

At the end of our 6-month-long design research and synthesis project, we developed a research report and exhibit for sharing our findings with the company. Our stakeholders asked us to share our research exhibit at an external conference, where they used the material to begin strategic conversations with several customers.

my role

I led visualization and concepting, insight writing, report copyediting, and exhibit documentation. I played a significant role in conducting research and synthesis, presenting the content to stakeholders, and developing the exhibit.

I joined this project as research was kicking off. Molly Reddy led the project, and together with Mike Bobick and Seul Rhee developed the research guides. We each alternated in leading and attending research engagements and all contributed to synthesis. Seul led exhibit design and Vy Vu led final visual design.

exploratory research

We kicked off the project by holding internal whiteboarding sessions and interviews with our partners and subject-matter experts. From there, we built a baseline knowledge of the MH industry and created more targeted research plans for our external research.

Our partners helped us identify several regions to focus our research on given their potential for MH sales and financing. They also put us in touch with people who could schedule times with our research participants.

Our external research included phone interviews, video interviews, and site visits with lenders, appraisers, title/escrow companies, construction project managers, dealers, manufacturers, and contractors. The site visits included semi-structured interviews, observation, and workplace tours. We spoke with people at all levels, from frontline staff to CEOs. In total, we had 32 individual research participants. Generally, two team members were present at each research engagement.

 
 

synthesis, insights, & visualization

After each research engagement, we shared high-level takeaways with the rest of the design team as well as our partners. Between research engagements, we processed our data by transcribing interview recordings, preparing interview quotes for affinity mapping, and updating our working process map in Mural.

During the synthesis process, we created four visualizations to document our process-related findings:

  • A stakeholder map, which highlights the main relationships and value exchanges

  • A high-level process map, which show the buying process from discovery of MH through move-in

  • Two detailed phase maps, which document specific actions and associated stakeholders during the Shopping and Financing phases

We also synthesized attitudinal and behavioral data to arrive at insights in the following categories:

  • Challenges in Scaling

  • Relationships as the Main Currency

  • MH Perception Has No Owner

For further details on the visualizations and insights, please contact me.

research exhibit

We created an exhibit that lived in our company's conference center for one day and put the word out through several internal communications channels. The exhibit included our four visualizations and insights, as well as physical artifacts we gathered from site visits, an audio station where attendees could listen to interview recordings, videos of manufactured homes being built and installed, and more. We also designed interaction boards, where we asked people to respond to "How might we" questions and add their own thoughts.

 
 

impact

Members of our customer-facing teams attended our internal exhibit and asked us to replicate the experience at the National Council of State Housing Agencies conference. At the conference, we reached at least 75 individuals from at least 25 organizations: both state housing finance agencies (HFAs) and associated non-profits. Our business partners used our exhibit to spark several strategic conversations with our HFA partners.