Discovering opportunity
in a crowded space
Rex is at the forefront of revolutionizing the real estate sector. I had the opportunity to join PropData, one of Rex's ten innovative startups, each dedicated to harnessing distinct opportunities in multi-family property management. Initially, PropData's online presence was limited to a simple landing page boasting 'Profound property insights,' alongside an MVP app designed to enhance property management efficiency.
Our team was made up of a Product Manager, Business Dev, a few Engineers, and now one incredibly talented, attractive, and humble designer 😁. I reported to a fractional leadership team (key stakeholders supporting all of the startups) and we worked in 6 week Blitz's consisting of 2 week sprints.
Gathering info
Entering this role, I embarked on a steep learning curve, diving deep into the industry's complexities, our competitors, and the needs of our key persona: Asset Managers who require real-time data yet lack a large analyst team or in-house business intelligence tools. My approach began with a thorough analysis of existing documents to build a foundational understanding, followed by strategic communications to ensure alignment with the team’s vision.
One of my initial tasks was to prototype several concepts that had captured the team's interest, setting the stage for innovative developments in property management solutions.
Finding our way
At this stage, our team underwent a restructuring, which now included myself, our Product Manager, with a partially dedicated offshore engineering team.
With fresh perspectives, we revisited notes from previous discussions and developed several key documents to enhance clarity. This process not only helped us refine our approach but also led to the discovery of new user needs and pain points, further shaping our project’s direction.
Even with just two of us working together, it is essential to do work to cultivate shared understanding and drive towards creative, empathetic, and business driven solutions.
Making some bets
Through many conversations, at first between the two of us, and then extended to broader stakeholders, a few themes began to emerge that we turned into assumptions:
Clarifying our way
Excited to learn if our assumptions were correct, we documented our thinking and started to design some concepts eager to see if our thoughts translated well into an actual product. We started with words, moved to sketches, then clickable prototypes. Each design challenge informs and impacts the rest of the product, requiring hundreds of refinements and explorations.
UI Nitty Gritty
These Benchmarks screens shown below are the most important part of our app. You can see how I progressed from screen to screen refining each design.
Learning things
With our leadership team on board, and alignment on what we wanted to learn, we were ready to dive back into regular user interviews and discovery calls. We prepared our script and maintained notes on our calls in Notion. Again, looking broadly at our conversations, themes would emerge.
In crafting our value propositions and presenting our concept, I also got to make this slightly over the top marketing video.
Where we landed
PropData is live today and helping property managers. It did not reach the scale we were hoping for due to a number of factors, but I am proud of process and pace we worked at.
That's a wrap