The property industry is one of, if not the, most networked industries in the world. It’s an industry that involves planning, design and construction, buying and selling, development and management of property. It is the sector where finance and the built environment meet.

‍

‍

My Roles

‍

My role in this project was Branding, User Research, User Interviews, Journey Mapping, Sketching, Wireframing, Flows, Visual Design and Interaction Design. ​

‍

The Brief

‍

To create the branding of the clients start-up app, along with designing the app interface and its user experience with the aim to provide a social and business community for people who worked within the property sector. The aim of the app was to solve these main issues…

​

Problem: No all in one platform for networking and promotion across all sectors

Solution: AlumBridge

Problem: Lack of trust with new individuals or businesses

Solution: Reviews, Endorsements & Badges

Problem: High-cost promotion through large social networks such as Facebook and LinkedIn as are too noisy and have too high volumes of unwanted audiences

Solution: A highly refined network of solely property experts and businesses

Problem: Current social platforms offer too much-unrelated information

Solution: A highly refined network of solely property information and data

‍

After which we were asked to produce a marketing strategy to build a large amount of users onto the app for proof of concept while building interest for series B funding.

‍

‍

The Design Process

‍

Due to the innovative nature of the concept, I needed to be rigorous with my research. After interviewing the key stakeholders I was able to grasp the overall key objectives of the project as well as what they believed the major pain points, their understanding of the market and the closest competitors. I proceeded to interview numerous potential users from all across the industry at all levels. 

Main points I learnt…

• Users wanted tailored content as well as filtered visible user types
• Overall, they wanted to be connected to opportunities, content / information and users (in that order)
• It was a high priority for the users to have some sort of value system on users and services
• Multiple people mentioned there was no viable CRM designed specifically for property within the market
• Linking digital with in-person events in one central place was highly sort after

From here I consolidated my findings by the use of processes like empathy maps then worked out how it would relate to the user experience. For example, because the research strongly suggested users wanted specific content, we created a category filter when the user first signs up. This allowed us to filter specific content for their feed as well as give us an initial indication for things like potential user connections and target ads.

‍

‍

‍

Consolidating the pre-defined brand identity, research and hierarchy of features I began wireframing the app. Once the app’s architecture was in place and approved by the client I proceeded to design the visual style of each page. The design task was divided into sections, each section contained multiple correlating pages which we used as milestones for client approval. Each stage involved numerous reviews and a close-knit dialog with the client.

‍

‍

‍

‍

Marketing Strategy

Executive Summery

‍

How do we plan to get these users onto the platform?

‍

There are hundreds of ticketed expos & events held each month in the UK alone, with thousands of attendees. We will look to partner up with as many of these event organisers as possible, offering attendees free and exclusive access to the professional tier of the app free for one year. As well as offering free promotional credits on the app to the event organisers. This will increase the value of the ticket for the event as well as offer the organisers a set amount of free advertisement the platform.

For the events that decide not to partner with us, we know when and where each of these events will take place. We can use this information to push download linking through social ads in these locations at those specific times knowing that these areas will be full of people whose interests are related to property.

‍

‍