Unlock

Unlock is a startup that seeks to simplify real estate transactions for small & medium property owners and their agents. They will bring a new sale-leaseback transaction structure to the commercial real estate mid-market, enabling small and medium business owners to own real estate faster and benefit from property appreciation earlier in their business life cycle.

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Problem

Real estate market in the USA is a chaos for small property owners. It is very difficult and confusing for owners with properties that are valued under USD 5M.

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Solution

Unlock seeks to develop a platform for users looking to sell their properties in an easy way. They will bridge the gap for small business owners and enable them to own their own real estate by creating a new type of real estate transaction and simplifying the processes around it. This transformation of wealth creation and business operations will be powered by data science, automation, and digital tools. Unlock will purchase a property with a small down payment contribution from the business owner, and sign a long-term lease agreement with an option for the business owner to purchase the property after 1-5 years. Rent payments will include a premium that goes toward building equity that ultimately buys out Unlock. Unlock shares the property appreciation with the business owner. The two type of user are agents and owners. Users will be able to receive cash for 100% of the value of the asset, have flexibility on funds usage and maintain operational control of the property.

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Goals

• Create a first MVP to present the idea of the product. This will give the business the possibility to find fundings and continue to iterate the product.
• This MVP is a webapp for desktop and mobile that functions as an info collection wizard. Users will fill a short form with primary information about the property and Unlock will contact them to continue the transaction outside the webapp.

• Re-design their actual landing so as to communicate the product and the service Unlock brings.

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Research

For this first sprint, I dedicated 2 weeks for immersion in this new environment and type of service. I analysed some direct competitors that bring the same service in the USA and also, some other businesses that use a similar system for other fields such as health or finance. The main insights I took from this phase were:

🖥 Website

• Use of clean, simple and lean design.
• Explanatory and transparent information about how the service works.
• Showing reviews and success stories adds value to the service.
• Use of CTA for a quick offer
• Improve motion and modules transition (storytelling)
• Use of illustrations to bring visual impact
• CTA / Email label on the nav bar while scrolling is an useful resource
• Show steps to enumerate what users will have to do or expect
  

💻 WebApp

• The form must be short and simple.
• The form will have two stages. One for a lead generation and another for the info collection.
• Form must be dynamic and follow best practices

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Troubleshooting

Unlock provided some UI screens they made with a freelance designer. They were ok with the visual design but not sure about the experience and the way information was shown. This is why they asked me to rethink the entire process and bring them a new simplified proposal.

Architecture & Navigation

For the second Sprint, I started thinking of a simple architecture for the landing, so as to show in a simple splash, the value proposition of the company, the service they bring and the tone of their message to their potential customers.

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Also, I thought of how the different steps of the webapp should be, in order to create a simple and fast user experience. For this, I made some user flows.

The UX was improved in order to have a more straightforward form with clear steps by dividing the form in two stages. The first part (lead-generation) is simple and quick, so users can add the address of the property, the business name and industry and then log in and finish. The second part (info collection wizard) is a longer form with 3 steps that let users add more precise information about the property, the business and the owner or agent.

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UI

As we were iterating an existing idea, we moved directly to propose new screens. Our scope was short so I decided not to do wireframes and moved onto the UI phase.

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Styleguide & UI Kit

As for the Dev handoff, I created the full design system with every item made component so as to make it easier not only for the engineers to develop it, but also for leaving an order and structure for future iterations.

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Stay tuned!

I am currently working on this case study ✨ Soon there will be more to view regarding the website and the full prototype 😊