Offer to Own
Offer to Own helps property buyers and agents from the first open home inspection through to sale and settlement. I worked as a Senior UX Designer on the entire product development process, from strategy and planning, research and ideation, to delivery and iteration. Below is an overview of my design process on this ambitious project.
Start with the basics. Who, what and why.
Our executive team wanted to create a product that is useful to buyers and agents and could be used to drive referrals to our existing property brands. In the property industry recommendations are trusted much more than a Google search. We started our discovery by mapping out the property buying experience for the key players in QLD and NSW.
During the discovery phase I facilitated a Service Design Blueprint session to map out the current property buying process and identify key moments where DBC could add value to buyers, legal practitioners and agents.
Defining the experience
We now had a better understanding of the business and technical requirements and had completed a round of user interviews regarding the buyer experience from inspection through to settlement. We began to design wireframes so that we could quickly test our concepts with potential users.
User Interviews
I conducted remote user research sessions which included a discussion about the participants recent buying experience and a series of short tasks in a Figma prototype. These sessions were incredibly valuable and we learnt even small changes in language within our offer form could confuse or mislead users. We learnt that first home buyers needed much more guidance than experienced buyers as they often weren’t familiar with the process and their legal responsibilities.
UI Design
As the wireframes took shape due to several rounds of buyer and agent interviews, I worked closely with our UI Designer to create the Design System. We used Material Design as we needed a solution that would be device agnostic.
This was one of my favourite parts of the process as it made the project feel “real”. Once the design system was established and approved we began designing using these components which sped up our processes greatly.
High Fidelity Prototypes
With the design system now established we were able to test high fidelity prototypes which gave users and internal stakeholders are clearer picture of what the live product would be. It was during this phase we learnt a great deal more from the agents as the experience was now tangible to them.
Preparing for launch
We now had a launch date and began to plan our subsequent releases. It was refreshing to be a few sprint ahead of development as the initial stages of the project had been very fast paced with continual testing and iteration.
QLD launch
Offer to Own launched in Queensland in September 2021. We are currently conducting user research to understand the Victorian property market for an expected launch in 2022.