Hometeam
Realtors, brokers, and buyers all synced up and communicating in one place
The Problem
We started with 3 disparate problems across the home buying lifecycle
Consumers face too many listings options when browsing for a home
Communications when buying a home are too disparate – too many communication channels with too many people
Documentation is laborious and not all digital or centralized
We found that communication between the realtor, broker, and buyer was a huge pain point. There were several disparate forms of communication; phone, text, and email.
Users & Audience
We interviewed buyers, then developed wireframes of the potential solution. We validated the core pain across all three problem areas, and also revealed an opportunity to address realtors.
Repeated the process for realtors, validating pain around client management, communication, document management
Team & Role
I was the product designer for the project. We worked with a product lead and one front-end developer and one back-end engineer. Our team had daily standups and weekly sprint planning and refinement sessions which were facilitated by the product lead. I worked in Sketch and passed off designs through Abstract.
Design Process
We started by identifying the user journey of communication between buyers and realtors. That user journey was tested and refined through focus groups and eventually a two week digital diary study between a single realtor and four of her buyers.
From there we used our learnings to prioritize three features:
Home listings search and filter
Bi-directional chat between the buyers and realtors
Application forms and document storage
User Interface Design
We had just 6 weeks to take the prototype into production code. Because of this, we used Google’s material design to help speed up development.
We tested the pre-production application with one Long Island based realtor and four of her buyers. Each participant used the application for two weeks of their home search and documented their delights, pains, and ideas about the product.
