Overview

Actual company name and logo withheld per non-disclosure agreement and will be referred to as REIC, or Real Estate Investment Company here.

• Role: UX Researcher, UX Designer, Client Point of Contact

• Team: Kate Hunt, Kara Snyder (me), Barbara Wye

• Timeline: 2 weeks

• Deliverables: High-fidelity mockup and functional prototype, 30-minute client presentation, and 35-page appendix of supplemental research

• UX Methods: Heuristic analysis, user interviews/contextual inquiries, open and closed card sorting, affinity mapping, personas, problem statement, feature prioritization/MoSCoW mapping, design studio/sketching, mid-fidelity wireframing, prototyping, usability testing, high-fidelity mockup, storytelling/public speaking

• UX Tools: Excel, Figma, Keynote, OptimalSort
  

Challenge

Our client, a technology-enabled, real estate investment company (REIC) who offers deals backed by due diligence, brought in our team to redesign the administrative console of their investor-facing website. This project is in conjunction with a first iteration of a proprietary content management system, or CMS. It was important to understand the current and future states of the systems that intersect with our work as one of the administrative pages is considered a “source of truth” by staff.

Goal

To create a more intuitive, streamlined experience for their Real Estate, Operations, Investor Relations, and Asset Management teams on the Admin Offering List (AOL) and Admin Offering Detail (AOD) pages and test mockups with usability testing.

Solution

A usability-tested, high-fidelity mockup of the AOL page redesigned based on user research. Based on a change in scope, we delivered research to support a future redesign for the AOD page and recommendations for operational improvement.

Research

Initial Stakeholder Meeting Prep/Research

Our team had approximately 1 day between receiving the brief and our kickoff meeting with our stakeholders - the CTO, the Product Manager, and the Principle Designer. Because of the complexity of REIC’s business and the back-end systems supporting their workflows, it was important that our team got on the same page before the kickoff meeting. (One team member had a real estate background, and I have financial services/systems experience as a former CPA.)

This meant doing a lot of research online, becoming more fluent with industry-specific jargon, and sketching partial information system flows for discussion purposes. This allowed us to cover our UX process and gather information more effectively during the 2-hour kickoff meeting. As the client point of contact (and team member with the most interviewing experience based on my background), I led the discussion.

Heuristic Analysis

After the client provided us access to their administrative console, we performed a heuristic analysis of the AOL page to identify any general usability issues upfront. We used the Abby Method for this evaluation.

User Interviews/Contextual Inquiries

Speaking with users is a crucial step early in the design process. Because we were working within REIC’s administrative console, we conducted 10 interviews with staff from 4 functional units. We created a script that was a hybrid user interview and contextual inquiry. We asked people to bring their own computers and demonstrate how they use the AOL and AOD pages.

This allowed us to observe people performing their regular tasks as well as collect generative, qualitative data about their mindset, goals, needs, behaviors, and pain points. We were fortunate to have approximately an hour with everyone we spoke with to gather what would turn into hundreds of qualitative data points. We captured audio and video of the interviews and compiled transcripts.

Additionally, we had in-depth stakeholder meetings with the Software Engineer and the Project Manager for the new Content Management System (CMS) that gave us additional context around the user interviews.

Card Sorting

For the AOL page: We created a closed card sort to understand how users would rank the current information on the page from Very Important to Not Important. Using this data in conjunction with the user interviews/contextual inquiries helped us determine what information should remain, be reordered, or be removed from the AOL page. On average, it took users under 3 minutes to complete this.

For the AOD page: We created an open card sort for the users we interviewed. The goal was to understand how they would group and categorize all of the AOD page features after the new CMS system launches. On average, this took users approximately 5 minutes.

Scope Revisited

After we completed the research and further conversations with the client, it was becoming clearer that the initial scope of the project was aggressive for our 15-day sprint (including 2 weekends). As a team, we initiated the conversation with the client, and I dug more into their priorities and expectations. We discussed some of the challenges (staff availability) and high-level findings that were impacting our initial Statement of Work (SOW) with the Product Manager and the Principle Designer. Collectively, delivering a usability tested, high-fidelity mockup of the AOL page to the client would be more valuable. We would also provide our synthesized research and next steps related to both the AOD page and the project as a whole.

Synthesis

Affinity Mapping

Ten user interviews/contextual inquiries in the field yielded hundreds of data points, including observations, behaviors, and quotes. Affinity mapping allowed us to collaboratively discover patterns, trends, and areas of opportunities. Because of the different, cross-functional data, affinity mapping was an iterative process. Initially, we looked at all of the data together. For the second time, we re-examined the data by segregating by AOL and AOD page-specific observations.

In total, we generated 18 I Statements, or insights from the perspective of the user. Due to scope constraints, we focused on the following key ones that relate to the AOL page:

• I rely on this page as the "source of truth" and want it to be accurate.

• I want the AOL to show info more clearly.

• I use Control + F to search quickly (because there is no search bar).

• I expect and want the closing date on the AOL page.

• I watch/monitor how fully committed a deal is (status).

• I want more filter options for Published on the AOL page (Live/Actively Raising, Closed, Exited).

• It costs $__ for me to copy/paste information.

• I want the AOL page to load faster.

• I search by entity name and offering (and want them separated on the AOL page).

• I don't use the REIC Support Contact on the AOL page.

Personas

Creating a persona helps us as UX Designers summarize our research, build consensus, and, most importantly, design the right thing for the user. Ultimately, we created 1 overall persona and 4 secondary, supplemental personas for each functional team, including Real Estate, Operations, Asset Management, and Investor Relations.

Problem Statement

Every UX Designer knows that correctly defining the problem statement is integral to the process. It refines the original hypothesis researching and synthesizing. It’s the bridge between designing the right thing and designing things right. While multiple problems may exist in the problem space, but narrowing the focus is essential with a 15-day sprint. Here is the problem our team focused on:

Ideation + Design

Feature Prioritization/MoSCoW Map

Time, money, and human power are constraints for nearly every project. As UX Designers, we have the ability - and responsibility - to contribute to the success of a project by prioritizing the features required on behalf of the user. This helps create a Minimum Viable Product that satisfies the user, instead of overwhelming them with featuritis.

Design Studio (Workshop)

We used a Design Studio to collaboratively ideate. We iteratively sketched, pitched, critiqued our way to a AOL page final design on paper. While we had hoped to involve our stakeholders in the process, our design studio ultimately landed on a weekend.

[A full report, including user quotes, was delivered as part of the supplemental packet of deliverables. It contained too much identifying information to be displayed here.]

High-fidelity Mockup + Prototype

Based on the mid-fidelity wireframe usability tests, we incorporated what we learned into the high-fidelity mockup. There were some minor design changes, and the design was updated in full color. The most notable, functional changes were:

• Adding a sort functionality to the column headers in the table

• Remove the Sort By drop down

• Add Cash Flowing as an additional filter option

Usability Testing for High-fidelity Mockup

Again, we tested the wireframe using 4 scripted scenarios/tasks with 3 new users. This time, key learnings from usability testing were:

• All users bypassed the Search bar for Control+F

• A robust search functionality would determine how much users would likely use it

• Users were able to find the edit function, but the waffle icon made people think they could drag/drop items

• Headers needed to be reordered to better represent the chronological flow of a deal

• All users time on task improved, but discussion further revealed more confusion around REIC’s lexicon

[Again, a full report, including user quotes, was delivered as part of the supplemental packet of deliverables. It contained too much identifying information to be displayed here.]

Deliver

Final Mockup

Based on all of our research and the results of the usability testing during this sprint, here is the final design we delivered to the client:

Client Presentation

On day 15, we again met with the CTO, the Product Manager, and the Principle Designer to deliver our research and findings. We created a 28-page deck for the 30-minute presentation. (There was also a 30-minute debrief/Q+A post-presentation.)

It was important that we created an understandable and informative narrative for our stakeholders. It was also important to illuminate opportunities with real impact to REIC’s P&L we uncovered beyond the design handoff. To the right is one example.

Final Recommendations/Next Steps

For the Admin Offering List page:

One final round of usability testing to determine how deal status and color map to each other through the lens of the user + final implementation

For the opportunity to improve REIC’s lexicon issue:

• Hover help: Consider brief definitions as hover states attached to field names to the Admin Offering List and Detail pages to create a common understanding, reduce input mistakes, and reduce the number of interruptions to the CTO’s workday by staff

• Glossary: To mitigate further confusion and improve communication between functional teams, create a company-wide glossary of terms and defined Offering Memorandum/deal naming conventions

• Training: As the number of deals and staff are projected to increase, consider increasing training when on-boarding new staff or for existing staff leveraging the aforementioned glossary and potentially workflow documentation

For the Admin Offering page (deemed out of scope for this sprint):

• Reorganize layout and address any unused/redundant fields

• Provide context around how input data is used in the system

• Further study the “tedious,” mistake-prone process

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