Full design of platform for both roles, B2B marketplace for Scandinavian countries, real estate investments
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Client
Propstreet
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In May 2022 I started a project with a Propstreet. Propstreet connects vetted investors with verified brokers in the marketplace for confidential commercial real estate transactions. It’s a narrowly focused niche with strong accent on anonymity and high quality exclusive service. I was lucky to work with Propstreet team, since they knew their customers really well. During ongoing communications and sales processes they continuously revealed fears and doubts of customers.
Deliverables: Platform that is fully designed for broker and investor roles, scalable design system, mobile adaptation, the onboarding of new users is designed
Challange
We had to completely change the approach and perception on how people perform actions. Since team members had biases and concepts related to how it has been already working for 5 years.
Role
Product designer, UI/UX
Niche
Full design of platform for both roles, B2B marketplace for Scandinavian countries, real estate investments
Location
In house, remote, Stockholm
When
May 2022 - August 2023
In May 2022 I started a project with a Propstreet. Propstreet connects vetted investors with verified brokers in the marketplace for confidential commercial real estate transactions. It’s a narrowly focused niche with strong accent on anonymity and high quality exclusive service. I was lucky to work with Propstreet team, since they knew their customers really well. During ongoing communications and sales processes they continuously revealed fears and doubts of customers.
Deliverables: Platform that is fully designed for broker and investor roles, scalable design system, mobile adaptation, the onboarding of new users is designed
Challange
We had to completely change the approach and perception on how people perform actions. Since team members had biases and concepts related to how it has been already working for 5 years.
Click to learn details ↓
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Role
Product designer, UI/UX
Niche
Full design of platform for both roles, B2B marketplace for Scandinavian countries, real estate investments
Location
In house, remote, Stockholm
When
May 2022 - August 2023
Requests
We had to completely change the approach and perception on how people perform actions. Since team members had biases and concepts related to how it has been already working for 5 years, It was challenging to find an innovative ways of using the platform.
The process
The process was iterative with the feedback and validation loops, considering the budget and time to deliver the feature. Quite often some parts were adjusted due to changing priorities and lean delivery/development expectations.
Reshape the existing features
To solve this I had to look into the root and values Propstreet brings to their customers. I had to employ Jobs To Be Done approach.
Using defragmentations of current features I gathered requirements of what system should do to reframe the customer journey.
Framing questions with How Might We allowed to generate creative ideas regarding approaching current pain points in a new ways and focus on desired outcome without being tied to already known UI solution that do not work.
Examples of reframed features
Propstreet knows the behavior doubts and desires of their customers, however, we had to build new intuitive journeys and change concepts that were not obvious without explanation of the sales team.
Looking into the root of the feature we can find better way of it's representation
Thus, “Business card” was something between a public user profile and a paper business card. Looking into the job a user should complete and the values, we refraimed the idea of business card into more intuitive side panel, where we can get the information about the user from any part of the system.
Inbox
Also, due to internal logic and algorithms, we need to connect the chat not only to person, but also to a deal, since with one investor or investment company could be several deals in progress.
The problem propstreet had was that brokers quite often ignored investors. This lead to not the nicest experience from investors side and of course reduced the retention due to negative experience of being ignored. To push brokers answer investors the mainbox starts with the stack of unread messages.
Inbox with unread section
Simplify the workflow
Propstreet aims to empower brokers by streamlining their workflow and ensuring no critical detail is overlooked.
The research into broker behavior within this niche revealed that brokers often manage different stages of the pipeline for the same deal. Standard practice involves sending potential investors similar information, gradually divulging more details about the property.
In light of our recent redesign of the case page into a pipeline kanban with stages, the CTO proposed a concept where documents relevant to each stage would be automatically sent to every individual involved.
The CTO's idea was to use a drag-and-drop feature to progressively disclose more information about the deal, automatically sending a new document whenever a person reached a certain stage.
However, I had my reservations. Firstly, there was a risk of accidentally sharing confidential information. Secondly, this approach lacked intuitiveness. Lastly, some individuals might not be associated with the stage or the document in question.
To evaluate this concept, we developed a prototype. The testing confirmed my concerns, leading us to pivot towards a more scalable solution - automation. Automation provides flexibility that was not considered in the beginning and scale for future features.
Users can now determine what type of messages and documents will be attached and whether they wish to select the document. This approach offers users control while maintaining the flexibility inherent in automated rule-setting.
Onboarding
On of the key question was how to enhance the trust of brokers and investors to the platform. First and foremost there were some concerns regarding confidentiality and data entering. Secondly, the process to start required too much information from invstor in order to provide really good service and show the value.
To simplify the onboarding apart the classic approach of chunking information, we also left some hints related to why we need certain information and why it’s important for the good matchmaking.
Propstreet promises that this data will be used only for matchmaking and won’t be shown to other parties without their agreement. Working with onboarding and some parts of the system we looked into the value proposition canvas.
Mapping the user roles and their fears, desires and expectations was a crucial part to mitigate the points of vulnerability
In order not to overwhelm the user with too much of things to do, we provided an option to complete necessary details later, while the verification process is in progress, allowing the user to explore the platform and see potential benefits.
Case list
The purpose is to provide quick information about each case and let broker navigate through the cases quickly, responding to incoming leads, quickly checking their information and if they are suitable for the case add them to shortlist. First iteration of case list was a collapsable panel where the broker quickly could navigate.
Later we expended the case list to provide broker with some analytics and more information in preview to each stage. Now case list is a separate page with potential to scale and add analytics in future.
Incomming leads
Incoming leads are investors who have shown interest in a property after seeing the "teaser" (a term used for an advertisement in our niche). After assessing their profiles and investment capacities, brokers add them to a shortlist. This is a temporary stage, with the primary workspace being a separate shortlist.
Previously, these stages were differentiated by tabs. Now, brokers can view all investors they're working with at once. Additionally, having a stack of investors from incoming leads will help address a current issue where investors are often overlooked by brokers, leading to minimal activity.
The panel is collapsible, providing brokers with more space to manage investors and their respective stages when they don't need to work with incoming leads.
Adaptation
The app is desktop first, based on analytics and expected actions users work on daily bases. However we support mobile and tablet devices, since quick answering and communication could be crucial for some deals.
Understanding the situative context, the navigation was adjusted with the most usable actions in the top and hiding less usable tabs under burger.
We also implemented the dark mode, to support customer preferences.
Close case
Each closed case within Propstreet generates revenue for the business. Therefore, it's essential to encourage brokers to mark the transaction as closed and provide further information about the case.
We've designed a flow to prompt brokers to mark deals as closed. While there are more elaborate options for the future, we've opted to proceed with the simplest one for development purposes.
Portfolio
Based on the investment portfolio of investors Propstreet suggested investors good investment opportunities and matched them with brokers. The next phase of product development at Propstreet was designed to enable investors to sell their properties directly, bypassing the need for intermediaries.
To initiate and evaluate this feature, we created a portfolio view of properties. The real estate market often mirrors the stock market, with property values and demand fluctuating over time.
Propstreet proposes that investors gauge the demand for their properties by listing them on our platform, thereby gaining a true understanding of market demand. This can help prevent investors from being misled by unscrupulous brokers who may quote inaccurate prices.
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Thank you!
Propstreet team for trust and tight collaboration, branstorm and creation togather.
