Case Study
Shelter Naija — a property finder you can trust.
A mobile-first property marketplace designed for the Nigerian rental market, built around verification, clarity, and calm.
01
Project Overview.
The Goal
Build a mobile property marketplace that Nigerian renters can actually trust, one where what you see in the listing is what you get when you arrive at the door.
The Client
A self-initiated project shaped by real conversations with renters and young professionals navigating apartment hunting across Nigeria.
The Task
Lead the end-to-end mobile UX/UI, from understanding renter pain points to designing search, listing detail, in-app messaging, and a verification system that signals trust at a glance.
02
The Problem — the "why".
Fake Listings
The market is flooded with listings that don't exist, are already taken, or use stolen photos. Renters waste days chasing apartments that were never real to begin with.
The Verification Gap
There is no consistent way to tell a real agent from a scammer. Trust gets built one nervous WhatsApp chat at a time, with no platform-level signals to back it up.
Information Overload
Listings dump every possible detail at once, and somehow still miss the basics. Price, location, condition, and contact get buried under noise.
03
The Solution.
Shelter Naija is a focused mobile marketplace that puts trust before inventory, fewer listings, but every listing is verifiable, current, and easy to act on.
- Verified listings & agents with clear badges so renters know who they're dealing with before the first message.
- In-app messaging that keeps the entire conversation, photos and tour scheduling in one place — not scattered across DMs.
- Honest, human imagery — real photos of real units, with light guidelines that prevent the usual stock-photo trickery.
- A calm, scannable feed built around price, area and unit type so renters can decide in seconds, not minutes.
Hi-Fi Designs
The marketplace.
The core mobile screens — house details, agent's profile, and agent's list.
House Details
Agent's Profile
Agent's list
Lo-Fi Wireframes
Sketching the bones.
Grayscale wireframes were used to lock down hierarchy and tap order before any colour or photography entered the conversation.
04
Project Result.
Shelter Naija reframes property hunting as something calm and confident instead of anxious. Verification badges, in-app messaging and honest imagery work together so the first impression of a listing matches the last.
The product feels less like a classifieds dump and more like a trusted marketplace, one designed specifically for the realities of renting in Nigeria.
05
Key Learnings.
Trust
Trust isn't a feature; it's the product. Every screen had to earn it through verification cues, clear pricing, and honest photography.
Messaging
Keeping the conversation inside the app changed how renters behaved. Context stayed in one place, and tone stayed professional on both sides.
Imagery
In a market full of stolen and stock photos, real, well-lit imagery did more for credibility than any badge or copy line ever could.
Final Reflection.
Shelter Naija was a reminder that designing for trust is slower, quieter work than designing for delight, but for a product where someone is choosing where they'll sleep at night, it's the only work that actually matters.