Zyyo Investor Portal Revamp
UI UX DESIGN / PRODUCT STRATEGY
Currently, I lead a team in redesigning Zyyo’s membership portfolio. Currently I lead a team in redesigning Zyyo’s investor portal featuring a marketplace for commercial real estate investment opportunities. This case study encompasses the redesign of the market place, as well as new features including a portfolio management tool and an investment application tracking system. Our goals with the design were to providing a platform for investors to have greater clarify into investment opportunities, their performance, and their ability to refinance quarterly.
I worked on this project all the way from conception to release and product marketing. My role included user research, product strategy, UI/UX Design, prototyping, and marketing.
SPRINTS
PROJECT DURATION
8 Weeks
6
ITERATIONS PER SPRINT
3
Design Process
CASE STUDY OVERVIEW
Aligning Our Customers & Our Brand
Project Brief
Defining Product & Business Goals
Challenging Our Assumptions
Analyzing Our Insights
Designing the Solution
Designing, Redesigning, & Redesigning Again
Measuring Success
THE PRODUCT DESIGN CYCLE
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TEAM & PARTNERS
1 UI/UX Designer (Myself)
1 Graphic Designer
3 Full Stack Engineers
1 VP Of Strategy
1 CEO & Founder
5 Stakeholder Investors
Product Introduction
ILLUSTRATIVE PRODUCT PROTOTYPE
Aligning Our Brand & Our Customers
UNDERSTANDING OUR USERS
UNDERSTANDING OUR BRAND
The problem facing our target market is that real estate assets are highly inaccessible to the average investor, with very large up front investments and barriers to entry with exclusivity. Only 7% of global real estate is accessible to investors, whereas as 80% want to invest.
Zyyo is a real estate private equity firm that focuses on developing wholistic communities in emerging secondary cities. Our goals are to bring greater access and transparency to the real estate investing space. With inflation on the rise, Zyyo is helping investors protect their portfolios against volatility while diverting capital to community rehabilitation.
Project Brief
PROJECT KICK OFF
Product Purpose:
The business goal of the platform is to move Zyyo from the development side, into the position of a middle man, providing a duel sided marketplace of outsourced commercial development projects, and avid investors looking to invest in real estate.
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Users:
For this case study, we will focus on one side of the platform and that being the investor. We focused on wholistic approach that better delivered our value propositions of access to deals and transparency in the process.
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Initial Insight into the People Problem: Investors are looking to hedge their funds against inflation but...
1. Do not have access to smaller real estate development opportunities.
2. Do not want to have their money tied up in real estate for a really long time.
3. Do not understand and or trust how their money is going to be used.
Defining Product & Business Goals
INTERNAL RESEARCH & STRATEGY
I conducted design thinking workshops and affinity diagramming sessions to identity how a product might be able to achieve our company goals of:
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Providing Value Propositions to our clients; Those being personalized real estate diversification, access to a network of opportunities, and quarterly refinancing opportunities
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Growth: Investor & Developer Acquisition
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Efficiency: streamlining the approval process for investments and outsourced developments
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In so, we did value proposition mapping to define how the product could address our business goals. From here, we derived a product strategy and product roadmap for the platform.
Challenging Our Assumptions
EXTERNAL RESEARCH
We sought out to challenge our assumptions by talking to 5 of our current clients, from novice to experienced investors. From our Individual 1:1 In-Depth Interviews we found that;
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Investors want to pick and choose which projects are right for them based on varying credentials.
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Investors want transparency into asset performance in order to make refinancing decisions.
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Investors want access to human support and financial advice throughout their investment process.
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We also conducted usability testing with our current product to identify pain-points in finding and understanding projects.
USER TYPES
COMPETITOR RESEARCH
Analyzing Our Insights
USER JOURNEY
To visualize the service Zyyo is providing, I used a user journey to map out the;
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Stages of engagement with Zyyo
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Steps users take to find, understand, and invest in real estate properties
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The Happy vs Sad User Path
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Opportunities for positive experience during the process to mitigate pain points
Designing the Solution
IDEATION & RAPID PROTOTYPING
The solution we came up with was to design a application based portal that is accessible to our clients and other stakeholders. The platform will include a deal marketplace, client profiles with their portfolio information, a track record page, and admin access for organizational partners.​
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Deal Marketplace
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Deal Watchlist
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Portfolio Management Tool
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Investment Application Tracking
SITE MAP
HIGH FIDELITY USER FLOW
Designing, Redesigning, & Redesigning Again...
ITERATIVE PROCESS
ACCESSIBILITY & USABILITY; DESIGN FOR DEXTERITY, VISION, & CONGNITION
Measuring Success
LAUNCH, ITERATE, REPEAT WITH NEW INSIGHTS
Our most up to date launch included our newly designed portal with our new and improved marketplace, portfolio, watchlist, investment tracking, and deal watchlist.
By empowering investors with transparent asset management data, we saw a 60% increase in customer satisfaction rates, and a 40% increase in investor acquisition rates.
Some limitations included our ability to conduct in person user testing before launch.
Our next steps are to reconnect with investors to gain new insights, and iterate based on their feedback to create a perfect product market fit.​