Real Estate Technology Client
2018
Product innovation strategy produced for a leading real estate technology client — one of the top five real estate apps in the iOS and Android app stores.
We were engaged to deliver a new and de-risked product concept for 2018 design and development. The engagement carried four primary objectives: Deliver monthly recurring revenue, extend existing functionality rather than bolt on new features, launch to market by the end of Q3, and connect with advertising and applications units.
The project yielded a new experience paradigm that empowers real estate agents with enhanced data and timely insights. A year after the engagement, our client’s revenue doubled and a Series B round of funding was secured at a total of $32M. Both items were largely attributed to the rollout of our product roadmap, with the client’s CEO stating, “Working with Thinktiv was one of the best moves we made last year.”
The project commenced as a diligence effort to evaluate the company’s product design, strategy, personnel, and practice. Our team created instruments for evaluation, interviewed company personnel, and conducted external diligence and research.
In order to design a relevant and holistic solution, users were interviewed in iterative stages of concept development. In total, we spoke with 22 Agents over 20 hours of total interviews. Each interview stage led to more targeted research.
At the outcome of user interviews, a pattern was established regarding the Agent’s daily cadence. It became clear that a linear model of tasks and outcomes did not align with the reality of a real estate agent’s experience. Whichever solution would be created would have to be designed in recognition of this model.
A collaborative map of the Agent’s sales lifecycle was produced. It yielded a robust suite of hero needs statements for what may exist in a solution. The hero needs statements in turn helped continue building the Agent map, creating a feedback loop that formed the basis for the solution’s specific feature set.
Key pieces of data were catalogued across various documents and artifacts that informed the design of a solution. Nearly 100 pages of findings were produced and synthesized before entering the UI stage.
With clear signal towards a solution that combined remedies for various conveyed pain points, a solution named Proactive was designed. Through intelligent recommendations, Proactive would empower Agents to grow their business, enhance their brand, and nurture client relationships. These intelligent recommendations can be served to the user through an enhanced news feed.
Two sets of concept stories were produced to communicate the Proactive concept to the client.
After collaborative feedback and several design iterations, the Proactive concept was fine-tuned to allow for the client to begin audits of development and engineering. The final concept supported a wide range of potential future initiatives while unifying and enhancing existing product functionality.
Launch to market for this new offering is currently in progress.
PROJECT DETAILS
Client
Real Estate Technology ClientStrategy Partner
Thinktiv
Thinktiv
Technology Partner
Kickdrum
Kickdrum
Team
AJ Watson, CGO
Alex Pappas, Exp. Director
Andrew Persoff, Project Lead
Mike Varpness, Quant. Researcher
Aaron Farley, Qual. Researcher
AJ Watson, CGO
Alex Pappas, Exp. Director
Andrew Persoff, Project Lead
Mike Varpness, Quant. Researcher
Aaron Farley, Qual. Researcher