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REAL Mobile
RESEARCH / UX / UI Design / ART Direction
1.
MY ROLE
As an Art Director of Real and a UX/UI lead designer I've got involved with this project from the early product development phase starting by, designing prototypes, testing our concepts and eventually taking the product to market.
2.
THE CONCEPT
Real’s nimble and intuitive mobile app allows homebuyers to search for properties by location, area of interest, price, number of rooms, and amenities. The big challenge was designing a mobile application for iOS and Android users that will be a companion to a website.
Research and Exploration
1.
RESEARCH AND IDENTIFYING USER NEEDS
I conducted competitor analysis research. I took a look at Zillow, Realtor, Redfin, Trulia. Later on we conducted many interviews with our core real estate agent to explore the human side as well, to understand what are the main needs of an agent working in a field.
We identified number of main challenge point to resolve:
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We understood how they interacted with similar websites and what they expected from them.
After that, we discovered their pain points and learned more about what they felt at different stages
Gathered ideas about how we could solve some of the problems
2.
EXPLORING IDEAS
After spending a lot of time exploring other mobile applications and their interfaces, I started whiteboarding and sketching different layouts. I wanted to avoid hiding information in drop downs and provide a simple, seamless way to interact with our app.
Prototyping and
Testing Our Challenges
THE MENU CHALLENGE
1.
THE PROBLEM
The biggest challenge was to design app that would have many features and useful tools for a modern real estate agent operating in the field. Mobile application that will empower and distinguish him from and old school real estate agent that doesn't belong to a new and innovating digital brokerage as Real it is. But the Challenge and the main problem was designing such a diverse application with many tool but still simple, easy to learn and intuitively understandable to our real estate agents who's average age was over 50 years old that what meant to us that they weren't as tech savvy.
2.
THE SOLUTION
One of our first challenge was the menu structure of the mobile app, that in the beginning started as an hamburger menu but in the end, we went with the bottom navigation because users found what they were looking for much quicker.
THE CONTRAST DILEMMA
1.
THE PROBLEM
Our biggest discovery came from, that the average age of our agents was over 50 years old as mention above and their working environment is mostly outside, in the field and in the natural light environment. Both of this facts were very crucial to our UX/UI design decision process.
2.
THE SOLUTION
Considering both of this crucial discoveries , we had to pay closer attention while choosing our color pallet with high contrast colors and adjusting to a bigger size of the text and rest of the UI elements across all screens of the application so they will be much more easy visible to our agent while working in the field and not always.
The Rest of
the Features
Community
Instantly connect with Real’s agents via an active, friendly community. Receive advice and mentorship, or help others and become a thought leader. Our agent got platform where they were able to share and spread ideas, express their thought knowledge and personal experience. Later on we learned that this essential feature became one of the most useful functions in the app to contribute agents in personal and financial growth and in a sense of empowerment.
Listings Done Right. Search, Share, & Do.
You can see nearby homes for sale and customized to the filters that you choose. As an agent you can share with your clients and all in one single tap.
Chat With an Real Estate Agents
Once you find a home you love, use the chat feature to connect with a Real agent in seconds.
A Personal SiteBuild One in Under 30 Seconds!
Create your personalized client-friendly website. Our powerful technology makes it easy for everyone to get online with a stunning, professional and functional web presence. No coding at all – easy to start managing your real estate business online!
Client CRM. All in one location
You can see nearby homes for sale and customized to the filters that you choose. As an agent you can share with your clients and all in one single tap.
Takeaways and Next steps
Personal Conclusions
This mobile application started as a part of a much bigger project of redesigning and rebranding of the entire Real brand that I lead from my inception in the company. As a part of much bigger rebranding effort that included android app, tablet, web platform and printing materials, it was very important to me make the right design decisions with an iOS app so later this decisions could be properly translated and implemented across all the company products. The project was very collaborative and with developers, product managers, real estate agents and board members located between company's US and Israel offices, we worked towards one big goal, to disrupt and revolutionize real estate market in US.
Key Takeaways
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Agents value functions over luxury when it comes to utility apps. Overwhelming details and to many options can cause an confusion and drop off users use, especially as I mention above when the majority of our users are well above 50 years old and usually not tech savvy.
Offer new and existing users an onboarding experience, offer description for options and use layman language, keep your tone and content simple and user friendly as possible.
Every agent want to feel empowered and look professional so let agents to customize their personal info and build their profile in the app. Give them easy and quick option to build their online business and presence in a quick site builder as we made.
In closing, always keep in mind real estate agent environment of work, the nature of his day to day, his job specific needs and as always implement this accordingly in you final design.