Role

Product Designer, UX Researcher

Timeframe

3 months

Responsibilities

Product Strategy, Vision, Research, IXD, Visual Design

Team

1 PM, 1 Eng, 1 PD

Work Single Main Image

Adoption

85%

Retention

70% QoQ

Ops hours saved

7 days/partner

Ticket reduction

95%

The Need

33% of leasing agents, property managers, and marketing managers that uses Apartment List didn't have a solution to manage their listings independently.

Goals

The goal was to unlock supply growth and reduce churn by creating a self-service system that could scale to large enterprises, while still being easy to use for small businesses and internal teams.

As senior product designer and user researcher, I oversaw the execution to create a 0-1 product.

Vision

I synthesized several interviews to craft a supply vision based on people's needs. I worked with the product manager and team to gain stakeholder alignments on the vision. This in turn led to the roadmap of this new product.

Interview samples from proof-of-concept

Problem Sign

Easy is everything.

“I just want a button to push and it just works!”

Flexibility is missing.

“I can’t manage my units’ availability, edit their prices according to the market, photos, or videos.”

Visibility is important.

“What’s going on with my properties’ performance?”

Solution

Listing management

The lack of visibility and self-service into people to market their properties hampered companies' employees ability to engage effectively with their prospects. 

Our research revealed a common need for better tools to answer questions such as:
• What units are available?
• Which floor plan should be used for upcoming vacancies?
• What is the optimal rental price?
• What photos are necessary to stand out in the market?
• What conversations are being had with AI and our prospects?

View prototype

Managers need to see unit availability to decide how to market it

Work Single Main Image

Managers' teams upload hundreds of media content to market listings

Work Single Main Image

Managers gain confidence and trust in AI

Gaining deeper insights into the prototype

After many iterations, I conducted user research to understand client interactions and identify missing information. The testing validated our design decisions and informed visual tweaks shown in the prototype.

Solution Tick

“I love the new platform! Makes keeping up with my properties’ marketing a breeze!”

“Very pleased with the platform. It seems easier compared to other ILSes and runs much faster.”

“I love seeing the conversations with our prospects. It gives me confidence in the value of your AI agent.”

Building the system to scale

I created a supply-branded design system that would not only build the consistency but also save time for our team as they build new features. This will improve the overall process and start the foundation for a multi-branded management system.

Future steps

Navigating towards personalized progress insights and enhanced adoption

Although the feature made significant strides, only 65% of users completed their listing profiles, indicating an area ripe for enhancement.

Initial user interviews reveal that while we have solutions to their challenges, many are unaware, underscoring the need for better educational content tailored to specific use cases.

Moving forward, our vision encompasses a more personalized experience based on user roles, and a richer display of progress, emphasizing growth and offering more intelligent insights over time.

In addition, manual and automated feedback was too costly. We decided to add generic insights throughout the product and discussed the potential of being more intelligent.