Adam Acosta Design
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Product Redesign
For a real estate closing platform that supports activity and collaboration across all roles in a closing.
Prompt
Redesign of a current product to expand its capabilities and viability within the market.
My Role
UI/UX Design
Our company had a real estate closing product that wasn’t performing as well as expected.

Cue the call to action! They reached out to our UI/UX team to redesign the product with a fresh, exciting new focus.

I was tasked with redesigning the enterprise and consumer-facing UI by gathering and synthesizing UX research.
Table of Contents
  1. Discovery
  2. Problem Statement
  3. Roles and Activity
  4. User Insights
  5. Competitive Analysis & Key Differentiator
  6. Sitemap
  7. Wireframes & Feedback
  8. Assimilation & Refinement
  9. MVP High-Fidelity Mockups
  10. Conclusion
Discovery
‍The first set of questions I was curious to discover were the following:
  1. What roles are currently using the product?
  2. What value were they finding in using it?
  3. What functionality was needed to better serve the roles in a closing process?
Using an analytics  tool called WalkMe, I gathered valuable metrics from the current site, uncovering the most interacted-with pages and elements, and what roles were most actively using the site.
Here’s what I found!
Page Interactions
Key Insights
  1. The vast majority of roles using the product were title agents.
  2. There were 2 pages users interacted with most.
        a. Invitations (42.26%)
        b. Documents (34.53)
Key Insight:
After observing live playbacks and conducting user interviews, I found that users primarily use our product to notify others about closing status and send wiring information. Beyond that, the product offers little value, especially for roles other than title agents.

This discovery helped inform our problem statement!
Problem Statement
Users across various roles in the closing phase of a real estate transaction need a centralized platform that provides the necessary digital tools to efficiently complete their responsibilities. Currently, our product lacks the required functionality to meet the unique needs of these diverse roles, leading to inefficiencies and fragmented workflows.
Roles and Activities
After extensive research into closing process industry standards, I found that these roles were the most involved and were currently underserved by our product.

Once I discovered these roles, I was curious to find out if their core goals could be categorized by similar types!
Goals by role
Goals & Roles Organized by Closing Timeline
Goals synthesized into categories
Activity Findings
After synthesizing the data from each role and their respective activities, I found that although the activities across all roles were varied, they could be categorized into six different types.
Doc Signing/Viewing
Doc Upload
Financial Transactions
Info Intake
ID Verification
Secure Comms.
User Insights
Once I understood the activity types, I wanted to discover how each role is currently performing these activities digitally and identify any pain points they may have in the process.

I conducted a series of user interviews to answer those questions and inform my next set of decisions.
Key Insights From Interviews
Competitive Analysis
With user insights on desires and challenges with digital products, I conducted a competitive analysis of both direct and indirect competitors, including Qualia Connect, Open to Close, Dotloop, Folio, and Broker Mint.

My  goal was to identify common features and distinguish competitive differentiators.
Competitive Findings
Competitive Differentiators
  • Tasks driven by activities rather than a simple checklist
  • Centralized and secure communication via text or email
  • Comment on documents and tasks, and notify assigned parties
  • Activity access to parties without an account
  • Functionality that meets the actionable needs of all roles involved in the closing process
Common Key Features
Secure inter-party two-way communication
Timeline view
Centralized document repository
Document review
Milestones/tasks
Integration capabilities
Timeline view
Notifications
Sitemap
Once I had my competitive findings, user insights, and an understanding of the goals of each role, I was ready to begin architecting the sitemap!
Wireframes & Feedback
My next step was to create wireframes based on the insights from the activity findings, user interviews, and competitive analysis. Once I had our wireframes, I validated the design's flows and functionality.
Initial Wire Frames
Key Insights From Wireframes Feedback
Assimilation & Refinement
After assimilating feedback from our target roles as well as internal stakeholder feedback, two important findings emerged. These findings helped us pivot regarding Title Admin users and provided a starting point for what we believe will be one of our most valuable differentiators.
Key Refinement Findings
  1. Title Admin users should be able to perform their work in the closing process without leaving their current TPS.
  2. Providing functionality that matches the needs of various roles and then assigning that functionality to tasks to be performed may be one of the most significant value differentiators we can offer.
Although we were designing and solving with the full product in mind, these 2 findings helped to define an MVP to focus my efforts on.
MVP Assigning An Action User Flow
Activity Type Functionality
Rather than simply accounting for the task activity type in the form of data, we determine to give the ability to perform the activity necessary for each task assigned.

You'll also notice that these functionality types go hand in hand with the activity types discovered in my earlier findings!
Doc Signing
Doc Request
Payment Request
Custom Forms
Proof of ID
Secure Comms.
High-Fidelity Mockups
These high-fidelity mockups cover the MVP needs for the activity types of Document Request, Secure Communications, and Payment Request. Document viewing and signing will utilize a fragment from a product within our suite. Custom forms for Buyer/Seller data collection will use a third-party form builder called PDF SDK.
Admin Task Activity Configuration
Consumer To-Do Tab
Payment Requests
Document Request
Secure Inter-Party Two-Way Communication
Conclusion
I found that understanding the process of the closing phase in a real estate transaction was crucial to the success of this project! Discovering the pivot towards consumer roles and functionality types may not have happened without the insights from our stakeholders. It was a great example of the importance of flexibility and iteration to provide the most valuable product!

I look forward to seeing the progression of this product as it implements the full sitemap and pages.
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