Let’s talk about document management across seven loosely connected products.
Problem statement:
SkySlope has many products all with document storage needs. Today, those products and documents are siloed with a lack of seamless cross-product sharing functionality. Agents are constantly download and re-uploading dozens of signed documents, wasting time in the process and creating an auditor’s paper-trail nightmare.
Goal:
How might we allow documents to travel with our agents and brokers throughout all of the phases of a real estate transaction in a well-documented manner that all of our products seamlessly support?
Solution:
Each SkySlope product serves a specific role in the transaction process, each hand crafted to meet the unique needs of agents and brokers at each and every stage.
A lot of the user experience of this functionality is not based on UI at all, but rather with connecting core products on the backend with the help of developers, to create a centralized location for document storage.
By collaborating with development early on the shared service architecture, it freed designers to create a better document storage experience for each product, with interoperability, knowing that it was something our backend solution could handle.
Initial UX
Final UI
My Role and Impact
Led kickoff with stakeholders to align and gather all requirements and data
As owner of product voice, orchestrated the instructional functionality to users from start to finish, including onboarding
Owned the UX initial concepts and presented to executive leadership
Managed relationship with developers to create a solution that was both visually pleasing and technically feasible–and transferrable throughout all of SkySlope
Persuaded product managers to invest in our users–not just to build easy and fast but to build sustainable and future forward
Refine and bring into high fidelity UI and requirements to handoff to developers
Monitored incoming feedback for user pain points and any incoming patterns for future iterative improvements
The UI
The UX
My Takeaway
Working with developers early and often uncovered opportunities and limitations that influenced designs
Very complicated to match listing and buyer agent files, even if addresses are the same
Design details like creation date or source location needed to be communicated to developers to be made available to the UI
Once a solid shared service was understood, it made designing tailored experiences across products for handling documents more cost effective, meaning better experiences for our users were delivered.
UX research found agents engage in document sharing throughout various stages of the transaction.
50% of agents prefer to request documentation before submitting an offer, while the remaining 50% require it immediately after making an offer.
Who is our user? Who did we build this for?
Agents, brokers, auditors alike will need access to transaction documentation during the lifetime of a real estate deal.
Want to learn more about them? Talk to them here: PersonaChat with a custom GPT I created with the knowledge-base of our products, our user-types, and the common law and standard practices in the area they serve.