The Houzz Blog

Houzzer Profile: Minwen Ji, Software Engineer

Thursday, November 16, 2017

As a member of the Houzz backend team, Minwen works on infrastructure and platform products to improve the Houzz community experience by making the website faster and more reliable. When she’s not working, Minwen enjoys traveling with her family to places they’ve never been before. Their last stop was Iceland.

Why did you want to become a software engineer?
I’ve always liked building things, but didn’t start coding until I was in college. When I was a teenager, computer science was just getting started in China. In high school, the top four students from each province were sent to a national physics competition where we met professors from the country’s top universities. I met with one professor who offered me the opportunity to attend Tsinghua University and study computer science. All I knew of computer science was that it was an exciting new technology, but I said yes right away. It’s pretty incredible that a decision made by a high school student, far from home, with no input from my parents, could drive my lifetime career.

Why did you decide to join Houzz?
A few of my friends worked for Houzz and told me about the supportive community culture they experienced, which is what drew me to apply. My interview confirmed what I had heard from my friends and I couldn’t wait to get started!

What is the best part about working at Houzz?
From an engineering perspective, I appreciate the Houzz code review process. It promotes quality and productivity, allowing you to focus on the big picture to improve the overall experience of the Houzz platform for our community.

From a workplace perspective, I was so pleased to find that my friends were right about the culture at Houzz. My particular focus on the Redis database allows me to interact with different teams within engineering, and I can see that teamwork and collaboration are valued and encouraged on all projects.

What Houzz project are you most proud of?
When I joined Houzz last year, we realized that as Houzz continues to scale, we’d need to identify and implement solutions to handle the growing amount of data required to run the platform. Houzz historically used Redis as our main de facto data storage cache. In the past, as the company scaled up and we outgrew the storage capacity in one Redis server, we’d open a new server and manually move a subset of data from existing sources to that server. That move wasn’t transparent to the applications in Houzz that access data from these servers, so we’d have to go back and modify code for those applications. It was a very manual process.

In order to automate the applications we use on a daily basis and create transparency between those applications, we decided to migrate all of our data from individual Redis servers to a Redis Cluster, which allows us to continue adding storage in a more transparent manner. I’m proud to be a part of Houzz’s growth. You can read more about the migration to Redis Cluster at this link.

What is something that has surprised you about working for Houzz?
I’ve worked on a number of large-scale tech company campuses, so when I started working at Houzz, I was surprised at how much I enjoyed working in downtown Palo Alto. It was an unexpected feeling of freedom and I love to pop outside for a cup of tea or walk down University Avenue in the friendly crowds.

Is there anything that you’ve learned that you’d like to impart on others?
Always keep learning! Stay open minded and keep an eye out for new technologies on the horizon.

How do you use Houzz in your personal life?
My husband and I are in the process of building a new home and we use Houzz a lot! Before hiring our designer, we looked at her profile on Houzz to make sure she had experience with the city and the styles we will be incorporating. Now we are using Houzz to collaborate with her on the project. I just save a photo to our ideabook and send her the link, so she knows exactly what I have in mind!

Designing the Houzz Creative Process

Wednesday, November 8, 2017

The Houzz team of designers has grown quickly over the past few years to more than 25 designers across product, branding, and marketing. This growth has supported Houzz’s expansion both to new markets (we’ve launched dedicated platforms for 14 countries) and to new offerings, such as our home products marketplace, the Houzz Shop.

For our team to best support the company through rapid growth, we needed to put new processes in place. We understand the value of having a good design process, which both promotes design thinking and helps move ideas from concept to completion. But we also understand that too much process can lead to doing things in the same way, which hinders creativity. So how could we develop a process that promotes creativity as well?

We ultimately decided to create different processes for different types of projects, which we defined as people-driven, technology-driven and data-driven. Taking this flexible approach allows us to adapt to the specific needs of each project, ensure the best results for our community and be creative.

Here’s how each approach works:

People-driven
People-driven projects are inspired by our community. As frequent users of our platform, our community of homeowners, design enthusiasts and home professionals regularly provides some of the best ideas to enhance our platform. In this process, we first listen to the community and then use research to further understand their needs, wishes and pain points. From there, we take an iterative design process that shapes our ultimate solution.

For example, we heard that people wanted to be able to mark what they like on the photos that they browse, save and share on Houzz, to better communicate their home design ideas. We conducted research to understand how our community would want to interact with the more than 15 million retina-quality photos on Houzz – other than saving them and adding notes – and what features would be intuitive and simple to use. The result was our Sketch tool, which enables people to add measurements, notes, stickers, products from the Houzz Shop and more to bring design ideas to life. The tool helps people communicate and collaborate more effectively on their home projects.

To expand on the research involved with this process, we first used it to understand whether or not people would want to use this tool, and then to learn how they would use it. We shared our designs and early implementations with users to find out what was working and what wasn’t. Questions we asked included, “How much pressure needs to be placed on the screen to get the stroke weight they want?”, “How easy is it to find the product users want to add to the sketch?”, and “Which gestures should we use for scaling and resizing elements?” This type of feedback is important to gather during the design process, so that the resulting feature will best meet people’s needs. We continue to collect feedback and data on how the tool is being used as we work on its next iterations.

Technology-driven
New or better technology also drives the design process. In this instance, our design and engineering teams work in parallel, collaborating and iterating on a variety of approaches to define product details together.

The technology-driven process was important in the development of the View in my Room 3D tool, which lets people see more than 500,000 products from the Houzz Shop in 3D in their homes before they buy. We started by defining the entry points and main flows of the user experience. The engineers then briefed us on the technology and we worked closely together from there to determine core function operations and the appearance of 3D objects within the room. We couldn’t move forward with the design process without trying the real-life implementations, and the developers couldn’t move forward without the design specs and flows. We created many different designs, tried them out, and made changes as needed, before we landed on the final design. This collaborative process helped us gather important ideas from both teams along the way to deliver an innovative product which has been used by more than one million people since we released it earlier this year.

Data-driven
We use a data-driven process when working on optimizing existing experiences and start by evaluating current product performance data provided by the analytics team. The data identify potential pain points for our community and provides a baseline from which to improve. We create, implement and test a variety of hypotheses to identify the highest performing approach. This way, we’re able to turn good products into great ones by trying different ideas with quick iterations to create the best experience for our community.

The data-driven process was critical in a recent change we made to our Visual Match tool, which uses visual recognition to make it easy for people to discover and buy on Houzz the types of products and materials that inspire them in photos. From the beginning, we’ve used tags to highlight products available for purchase on the Houzz Shop. The tags were big and green – to represent our brand color – and had become our trademark. Over time, we felt the design had become outdated and detracted from the browsing experience, so we decided to make a change.

The biggest concern we had during the redesign was that engagement might decrease if we made the tags less noticeable. Testing multiple designs uncovered that a more subtle white version performed better than the big green tags by 30 percent. The data provided insights into how our community uses and reacts to design changes and helped us to move forward with the best possible option.

Being flexible in our design approach allows our team to be nimble in solving challenges without compromising creativity. It helps us to gather ideas and feedback from our community and team members and verify our hypotheses with data and research. It also allows us to set the right pace for each project, and most importantly, it fosters innovation.

We’re always on the hunt for talented designers to join our team, check out houzz.com/jobs for open positions.

Introducing the Houzz Affiliate Program

Wednesday, November 1, 2017

We’re excited to introduce the Houzz Affiliate Program, which provides partners with the opportunity to earn a commission on sales referred to Houzz via their website, social media, or blog.

By joining the program, affiliate partners:

Earn an outstanding commission on all 10M+ products in the Houzz Shop (coupon codes excluded)
Receive weekly newsletters highlighting new brands, products, and offers
Get unique creative content including banners, ad units and more

In addition to earning affiliate revenue, partners receive a dedicated program manager and a comprehensive portal which allows them to track statistics and performance – 24 hours a day.

How it works:

1) Find a great product on Houzz

2) Get your unique code or tracking link

3) Use the link in your website or blog

4) Collect your commission

To learn more or to join the Houzz Affiliate Program, go to https://info.houzz.com/partner.html.

Houzzer Profile: Jason Siders, Assistant Buyer

Thursday, October 26, 2017

Jason is a member of the Houzz Marketplace team helping brands sell their products on the Houzz Shop. He is based in our Orange County office and is a recent newlywed! Jason and his wife enjoy spending time with friends, getting the most out of their Disneyland membership and cheering on the Anaheim Ducks during hockey season.

What do you do at Houzz?
I work closely with brands that sell products on the Houzz Shop and manage every aspect of the vendor’s relationship with Houzz, from the initial setup, to adding new products, to managing their account. It’s my job to make sure each brand is set up for success on our platform and taking advantage of every opportunity our marketplace offers, such as our Trade Program.

What brought you to Houzz?
I first heard about Houzz from a roommate of mine who worked on the product team, but it turns out that I have a lot of connections here - my wife’s college roommate is also on the product team and my sister-in-law works with me as a buyer. I guess that’s part of why Houzz feels like a family to me.

I was initially drawn to the company by the sleek look of the app and the website, but I’ve always had an interest in home design. When I was ten years old, my parents let me move into my own bedroom after years of sharing one with my younger brother. I spent countless hours drawing up plans, moving furniture around, decorating and re-decorating until I felt my father’s old study was truly my own. To this day, Houzz feeds my creative side and provides me with fresh ideas.

What do you like most about your job?
As an assistant buyer, I have the opportunity to build relationships with vendors who sell on the site and get to know them on a personal level. It’s rewarding to help vendors establish themselves on Houzz, watch their products become more popular amongst our community and know that I’ve made a difference to their businesses and their lives.

I also love new challenges and working on the Marketplace team brings something new every day. I am constantly learning about different computer programs, problem-solving strategies and the online retail industry as a whole.

What’s your favorite product from the Houzz Shop?
My last round of purchases included everything I needed for my new apartment, including a beautiful bed from Pulaski. My wife and I have very different design tastes, and it was important for us to find something that both of us liked.

There are a lot of great products to choose from on Houzz, but one of the more fun items I’ve seen are Requip’d’s BBQ tool sets, which are made from NHL game-used hockey sticks and other professional/college leagues. It’s a cool, unique concept that I love as a hockey fan.

What’s something that has surprised you about working at Houzz?
Houzz really cares about its culture, which is evident just by spending time in the office. There is a great sense of community where everyone seems to know each other by name. The laid-back atmosphere makes coming to work fun, and helps me to focus on performing to the best of my abilities.

What project are you most proud of while working at Houzz?
Before working as an assistant buyer, I spent time in vendor support, which was more of a project-oriented role. During this time, I identified an opportunity to update a few of our vendor guidelines, which ultimately led to a company-wide review to best address our vendors’ needs. As the Houzz Shop continues to grow, it’s important that our guidelines reflect changing practices in order to provide our customers with the best experience possible.

How has your role evolved from when you first started?
When I first started at Houzz, I worked in customer service, followed by vendor support, and now I am an assistant buyer. While very different roles, they’re all similar in that you need to think on your feet and problem-solve in real time in order to be effective. No matter what you do, it is important to build rapport with your clients in order to provide solutions to their questions and help them succeed.

What is your favorite decor style?
My tastes reflect a modern and contemporary style, but my wife prefers a more rustic look. Choosing items for our wedding registry was arguably the greatest test of our relationship so far! We’ve learned over time to compromise and as a result, our apartment takes on a more transitional feel. Maybe one day I’ll have my own man-cave with space for my guitars, a big screen TV, and (most importantly) dark, espresso-colored furniture.

How have you used Houzz at home?
I love finding new and unique products on the Houzz Shop and have spent countless hours getting lost in all of the great stories on the site. Articles on color theory, storage, and apartment living have helped my wife and I to make the most out of our home.

Houzz Barometer Tracks Hurricane Impact on Home Renovation Businesses

Tuesday, October 24, 2017

This quarter, the Houzz Renovation Barometer, which tracks confidence in the home renovation market among industry professionals, gathered information specific to business conditions in the Houston metropolitan area and Southwestern Florida following the severe impact of hurricanes Harvey and Irma in these areas.*

The hurricanes had an immediate effect on renovation-related businesses, with 28% in the Houston metro area and 41% in Southwestern Florida reporting that they suspended operations within the first two weeks of the hurricanes making landfall. Among those companies, 91% impacted by Hurricane Harvey and 65% affected by Hurricane Irma kept their doors closed for a week or longer. Despite closures, 92% and 78% of affected companies in Texas and Florida, respectively, expect to fully recover financially over the next 12 months.

Business owners faced challenges reopening their doors as the hurricanes exacerbated shortages of subcontractors (as reported by 38% of respondents in both Southwestern Florida and the Houston metro area), scarcity of products and materials (20% and 15%, respectively) and damage to local infrastructure (20% and 15%, respectively). Managing cost-concerned customers and consumer expectations also became challenges for businesses impacted by Hurricanes Harvey and Irma (46% and 23%, respectively, and 31% and 23%, respectively). As a result, project backlogs** increased by nearly two weeks, on average, from 2.9 weeks to 4.4 weeks in the Houston metro area and from 4.8 weeks to 6.5 weeks in the Tampa metro area.

Despite hurricane-related business complications, backlogs in the Houston and Tampa metro areas are among the shortest of the top 20 metro areas. Consistent with Q2 2017 findings, the metro area experiencing the longest wait times is Boston (13.2 weeks), followed closely by Seattle (12.8 weeks). The St. Louis and Phoenix metro areas have the shortest average backlogs (3.5 and 3.6 weeks, respectively).

Overall, the Houzz Renovation Barometer showed continued quarter-over-quarter business confidence in the U.S. across all sectors in Q3 2017, including architects, designers, general contractors (GCs)/remodelers, design-builders, building/renovation specialists and landscape/outdoor specialists. For more information about the Q3 2017 Houzz Renovation Barometer, read the full report here.

* Hurricane Harvey made landfall in Texas on August 25, 2017 and Hurricane Irma struck the Florida coast on September 10, 2017. Findings about the impact of Hurricane Maria, which hit Puerto Rico on September 20, 2017, were not included due to very small sample sizes.

**Project backlogs depict the number of weeks before an average firm can start work on a new mid-sized home renovation or design project given its current project commitments.

Inside Houzz Tour: Berlin!

Wednesday, October 18, 2017

Our Houzz family in Berlin has grown exponentially in the last year, and the office has grown with it. The original space was already a great reflection of the Houzz culture, with imaginative themed conference rooms and lots of room for both individual and collaborative work. The expansion added new meeting rooms and working space while making sure employees feel like they “come home to the office,” as one Houzzer recently put it.

Let’s take a tour of the office, starting with the café.

A wall of windows in the kitchen and eating area offers a bright and airy atmosphere for meeting people across all teams, whether over breakfast, catered Friday lunches, birthday celebrations or late-afternoon pick-me-up snacks.

What looks like a bright green refrigerator door in the kitchen actually leads to a hidden meeting room, with furniture sourced from a local Berlin bar. The pizza boards on the wall are a nod to our Italian team and Italy’s extensive culinary heritage.

Each meeting room has a theme, such as the Deutsche Eiche (German Oak) Room. The astroturf floor, wooden table, and forest-view wallpaper create the sense that your meeting is taking place in the middle of the Black Forest or a magical wood from a Brothers Grimm tale.

Next, we have the Games Room, where Houzzers have been known to play a round or two of ping pong during breaks.

The Beach Room boasts a surfboard table, a deck-style floor, a bench and even beach towels.

The open-plan office beyond is set up perfectly for collaborating, with wide desks set up in groups.

In the middle is a couch area for those who think best when they’re a little more relaxed.

The Whiskey Room just beyond the desk-area is a throwback to a traditional English study.

Houzzers often show off their talents on the working drum set, guitar and keyboard after hours in the Music Room, which also doubles as a spacious meeting area during the workday.

A row of polaroids of our team hard at work and play leads to a quiet office area and more creatively themed meeting rooms.

The Chinese Room boasts prints of vintage Chinese posters and a wardrobe that echoes traditional lacquered cabinets.

Next to it is the Gym Room. Its leather seats and punching bag, faux-brick wall paper and prints encourage Houzzers to be true contenders.

The GDR Room is devoted to ostalgie — nostalgia for the vintage style of East Germany — from a classic couch to East German medals, a record player, and of course the requisite orange wallpaper. It is full of vintage finds from flea markets and vintage shops.

The office opens out to a balcony with plants, a welcoming bench and an acapulco chair to let Houzzers enjoy a Palm Springs vibe as they look out onto Berlin’s famous TV tower.

We hope you enjoyed your tour through our Houzz Berlin home!

All images credited to Kate Jordan.

Houzz Previews ARCore-Enabled App on Stage with Google

Wednesday, October 4, 2017

The Houzz ARCore-based Android app was presented on stage today by Google as one of the top apps and experiences built with ARCore, the augmented reality software development kit for Android. Our demo showed how you will be able to bring the showroom into your living room and see how different furniture, accent pieces and more fit into your space. Houzz’s AR tool, View in My Room 3D, will integrate ARCore so that you can place products exactly where you want them in your home, true to scale.

With the initial version of View in My Room 3D, now available in our Android app, you can already preview half a million home furniture, decor and remodeling products from the Houzz Shop in your own home, before you buy – from vanities and light fixtures to sofas and rugs – and see realistic materials and textures. The ARCore-powered experience, which will be available early next year, will make the shopping experience even better.

Houzz was named “Best App” at the inaugural Google Play Awards in 2016. The Houzz app, updated with View in My Room 3D, is available to download on Google Play℠ now, and will be updated with ARCore in early 2018.

A Style Makeover for Master Bathrooms

Tuesday, October 3, 2017

Master bathrooms are getting a style makeover, according to the 2017 U.S. Houzz Bathroom Trends Study,* which found that 90% of renovating homeowners change the style of their master bathroom during upgrades. Of those making a change to the overall style, contemporary (25%), transitional (17%) and modern (15%) lead in popularity. Design decisions vary by generation, with Millennial (25-34) homeowners opting most often for modern style master bathrooms, while contemporary is most popular among Gen-Xers (35-54) and Baby Boomers (55+).

White continues to gain popularity in renovated master bathrooms, with even more countertops and walls appearing in white this year (40% and 19%, respectively) compared with 2016 findings. Additionally, bathroom features are increasingly contrasted against gray walls and cabinet surfaces (35% and 14%, respectively, compared with 30% and 9% in 2016, respectively).

Millennials are significantly more likely to choose white countertops (52%) and cabinets (50%) and gray walls (48%) and flooring (43%) for their master bath than Baby Boomers. When it comes to wood cabinets, Baby Boomers tend to pick medium tones, while dark wood is preferred by Gen-Xers.

Among the 81% of renovating homeowners tackling master showers, ceramic and porcelain tile or natural stone tile and slabs are the top surface materials chosen, with marble being the universally preferred choice for natural stone, especially for Gen-Xers. Other materials see generational biases. For example, travertine is more likely to be installed by Baby Boomers, while slate is preferred by Millennial homeowners.

Ceramic or porcelain tile (63%) and natural stone tile or slab (32%) continue to top the flooring list, likely integrating the look of the shower with the rest of the bathroom surfaces. In contrast, these higher end finishes are less likely to appear on walls outside of the shower area, with just 27% choosing ceramic or porcelain tile and 15% opting for natural stone.

For more insights from the 2017 U.S. Houzz Bathroom Trends Study, check out the full report here.

*Houzz survey of more than 1,200 U.S. homeowners using Houzz who are in the midst of, are planning, or recently completed a master bathroom project, was fielded between June 6 and August 7, 2017.

Houzzer Profile: Yunsong Meng, Research Engineer

Friday, September 22, 2017

As a research engineer, Yunsong helps augment search and personalized recommendation experiences for the Houzz community. Outside of work, Yunsong enjoys spending time with his family, and looks forward to sharing his love of the outdoors with his young son.

Why did you decide to become a research engineer?
I’ve always been driven by the desire to find and solve difficult challenges, a common trait among research engineers. I studied computer science in school, which led to a PhD in artificial intelligence, and a series of papers and patents on intelligent systems. I’m thrilled to bring intelligent techniques to life.

What brought you to Houzz?
A number of my friends were working at Houzz, two of whom I’ve known since we attended the University of Science and Technology of China together. The team was looking for someone with my unique search experience, and I was intrigued by the positive environment that I’d heard about from my friends.

How would you describe what you do at Houzz?
My role is focused on search quality. I see myself as a translator helping Houzz to better understand what the customer really wants. Whether a user is looking for a home pro in a specific location or using a lesser known synonym to describe a product they want to purchase for their home, my work integrates the Houzz search platform deep into the home remodeling domain and helps to provide users with the best possible results.

What are some of the challenges to improving search?
People generally search with something already in their mind. The inherent challenge for search is to understand the query semantic and the real user intention behind what they typed. The search algorithm must recognize a variety of words, their relations, and what they mean under a specific context. For example, a chair can be contextually described as a seat, stool or bench. The color “red” can describe cabinet color, backsplash color or floor color. Technology must be a bridge between customer understanding and company terminology and resolve ambiguities in each specific situation. That’s why it’s so important to develop a robust catalogue of concepts to give each query meaning.

Do you interact with other teams at Houzz?
Yes, my research informs the development of the Houzz infrastructure, so I work closely with that team to build a comprehensive catalogue of query terminology that bridges user intent and remodeling domain concepts. We work together to make our machine learning systems more intelligent. I also work closely with the international and industry solutions teams.

What surprised you about working for Houzz?
What surprised and delighted me about working for Houzz is that the leadership empowers you to improve products right away. Within my first two weeks, I had already led my first production deployment. They let me hit the ground running!

Houzz App Gets 3D Upgrade with Apple ARKit

Tuesday, September 19, 2017

Today we introduced an even better experience for home shopping and design through our upgraded augmented reality (AR) tool, View in My Room 3D, within the Houzz app for iPhone and iPad. Using ARKit, you can now virtually place half a million home furniture, decor and remodeling products for every style and budget – from sofas to rugs to bathroom vanities – exactly where you want them in your home, true to scale. Products are automatically kept in a shopping list for easy checkout so you can discover, experience and buy the products you love right in the Houzz app, without leaving your home.

Our upgraded View in My Room 3D tool enables you to:

Walk up to products to see realistic materials and textures, which display according to the room’s ambient lighting using your device’s camera
Add multiple products to a room, including items on top of rugs to understand how a space will look

As View in My Room 3D is fully integrated into the Houzz app, you can also use other Houzz tools, such as Sketch, to experiment, collaborate and communicate with others on your design ideas.

Since we launched our initial version of View in My Room 3D within our app for iPhone and iPad earlier this year, over a million people have used AR when buying products in the Houzz app.

You can read more about the upgraded tool here. Download the Houzz app for iPhone and iPad on the App Store here.