SUMMARY

This app gave Users in the Commercial Real Estate industry the capability to add, edit and remove property listings in the hopes it would produce the highest quality and completeness of listing data possible.

GOALS & OBJECTIVES

• Design industry-best User Experience for a Listing Manager
• Create an intuitive experience that will produce more User Engagement and increase Listing completeness
• Reduce the overhead of Customer Service inquiries

MY ROLE

• Partner with Product to identify features that extended well beyond MVP
• Design User Experience from wires to final UI
• Oversee, review, and provide feedback to Design contractors
• Create, document, and componentize new design patterns

CHALLENGES

• Data Model was being rebuilt in parallel with design work
• Some new contractors were added to supplement the velocity in-house
• Requirements were only 75% vetted at the onset of the project
• Catered to multiple Personas with varying Listing volume from one to thousands

HISTORY

The previous version of the Inventory Manager suffered from fundamentally flawed UX, inconsistent performance and off-brand styles. Coupled with its buggy nature, we were chomping at the bit to redesign it from the ground up.

RESEARCH

The Product Team and Support Team had worked with v1 Users and potential Users in the industry to assess needs, and help us balance priorities with the business needs. There were also baselines tests for some functionality leveraging UserTesting.com and in-person interviews.

APPROACH

My approach was to prioritize and build a hierarchy of UX patterns for the Users based on known behaviors. Many of them were managing their Listings in spreadsheets, so I used that concept to create a spreadsheet-similar UI that was more intuitive, flexible, powerful and shareable.

PROCESS

Research & Requirements Gathering: I helped the Product Team nail down requirements and get feedback from Users and internal stakeholders. I then studied them extensively so I could fully understand the product scope.

Sketches & Wireframes: I sketched and whiteboarded on a regular basis with Product and Leadership. I presented multiple rounds of wireframes and prototypes to stakeholders until each workflow was refined. This went from lo-fi to hi-fi wires, depending on complexity. I also reviewed wires from contract Designers and provided feedback as needed.

Final UI: Designed and documented all new design patterns. In addition, I set-up Sketch document templates for all main areas of the app. I also reviewed UI from contract Designers and provided feedback.

FINAL SOLUTION

JOIN & LOG IN

I updated the Join and Reset Password screens to reflect updated Password security. In addition, I changed Sign In and Sign Up to Join (as in Join our movement) and Log In (sticking to more differentiating verbs).

PROFILE

The purpose of this feature is to enable a User to create and manage a professional profile on RealMassive. In addition, it allows them some control over how they are displayed on a public Company Profile Page.

ACCOUNT MANAGER

New Users register for free on RealMassive with the intention of finding, saving or listing CRE properties. They could then manage their account in this section.

CREATE PROPERTY LISTING

This was the most used and most difficult workflow to design, as there were 20+ fields per unique Property Type (x3), media inputs and few required fields–though Design worked to encourage the highest level of completion. In the end, we built a stepped “Wizard” that was later mimicked on the Create New Company workflow.

MAIN VIEW

This section housed the aggregated view of all existing User Listings they were associated with, regardless of Property Type. It allowed Users to add, edit and share Listings. Some features included “Find & Replace”, “Bulk Edit”, “Bulk Import” and column customization.

EDIT SINGLE LISTING

Instead of pushing Users to a complete new screen for even the tiniest edit, I implemented a drawer/overlay in the Main View to keep the context of all of a User’s Listing.

CREATE NEW COMPANY

A User can create a new Company or claim an existing one and invite others to that Company. All of the information here powers a public Company Profile Page.

COMPANY MANAGEMENT

In this section, a User can manage a Company Profile, members and related privileges.

OUTCOME

• Within 3 months of launch, CS inquiries were reduced by over 50%
• Listing form completion increased from nearly 25% to 75%, improving our listing accuracy and completion

REFLECTION

This was a beast of a project, due in part to the scope, new data model, auth updates and the need to leverage contractors across all disciplines. Insufficient planning up front slowed our efficiency, but we managed to power through.