UX in real estate —
reduce time and effort in a sale process
UNIQ Property Sale Portal
September 2015
Digicap Solutions
UNIQ Group
Lead Designer
UNIQ Property Group is a fast growing property marketing specialist and finance provider in Australia. UNIQ quickly acknowledge the growth of digital technology and endless opportunities it can provide to fill the gap between processes as well as connecting all available data and boost the efficiency in communication.
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The Property Sale Portal was designed for tablet devices only and was one of multiple projects we were engaged during UNIQ’s digitalisation evolution.
Responsibilities
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Analysing business requirements
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Liaising with digital strategist in communicating with the client
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Identifying target audiences and establishing pasonas
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Creating user contexts and journeys
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Drafting sitemap
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Presenting proposed arroach
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Creating wireframes and handling iterations
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High-fidelity UI design
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Usability testing
The goal was to build a property protal that connected to their CRM to assist the sale representative during their sale process. By using the portal, all information on a Lead will be recorded instantly to the CRM, the portal will also be able to suggest and compare relevant real estate options based on the provided criteria.
Further more, the portal also provides functionalities that help organise a sale representative’s records, such as: short listing, sales pipeline, project activities mornitoring, online reservation, etc. Last by not least, a purchase can also be finalized with secure payment and sign-on-glass option.
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The portal plays a critical role in cutting unnecessary time and cost to rein traditional paper-based procedure, such as: re-entering meeting notes, file collecting and categorizing, document printing, back-and-forth reconfirmation etc.
In brief, the main challenges i was facing were:
1. There wasnt a project manager assigned to the project due to low budget.
2. Client kept changing their mind and adding more functionalities along the way.'
3. Detailed property comparison process with shortlisting feature.
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Overcoming challenge #1:
I created a google spreadsheet to manage and monitor the progress myself. The spreadsheet was then shared with the client and the technology strategist to keep everyone informed about changes and completed items. The spreadsheet included tabs like: Meeting notes, required functionalities, tasks grouped by phase and priority, usability testing etc. I also communicate with client to collect data and changes confirmation.
Overcoming challenge #2:
With the shared spreadsheet, i was able to manage the change requests and advise the client of possible outcomes with pros and cons. Usually, a low-fidelity prototype was required to explain potentials for each change.
Overcoming challenge #3:
I designed 3 most possible user-flows based on the data from the user behavior research. Then, i created a low-fidelity prototype on inVision (the wireframing tool used throughout the project) and get people in the office to try it out. As they were experiencing the prototype, i would ask them to do certain tasks to study their interaction and reaction to the design. People in the office seemed to be struggling with the interface a little, it put me in a very nervous situation.
Next, i repeated the same process with actual sale representatives, and surprisingly, the insights are quite different. They seem to go through the tasks easier and had little problem to navigate. Therefore, the learning i got from this is about the user's mindset and the context. It's always best to test a product with the actual end users.
