Transforming Mission Control

Project Type

Saas Dashboard

My Role

Interview Protocols, Product Design, Visual Design

Duration

3.5 Months (Sponsored Studio Porject)

Team

8 Designers, 2 Product Managers, 2 Developers

Highlights

How might we allow real estate agents to run and manage ad campaigns & making mission control scalable and more intuitive

Introducing Agents Access

A new mission control which lets agents create, run, budget and manage ad campaigns.

Improve Interface Design

A visual rehaul making the existing platform more intuitive, accessible and scalable.

Future-proof Navigation

A scalable platform ready to accommodate new feature additions

Streamlined ad creation

Making the ad campaign creation process faster by reducing nested windows and pop-ups.

Personalized ads

Introducing custom images to allow agents to represent their personal brand the best.

Background

Some context about the project

What is Ylopo?

Ylopo is a real estate tech startup that use cutting-edge digital tools to help real estate teams and agents attract and nurture potential home buyers and sellers so that they turn into home sale.

What is Mission Control?

Mission Control is a digital marketing dashboard that lets real estate teams and agents create and manage ad campaigns.

Who are the primary stakeholders?

Real Estate Agents:
They help homeowners find buyers and vice versa by using different marketing methods and their expertise of the real estate market. Agents want tools to easily create and manage advertisements for the houses they are selling.

Team Owner

Agent

Real Estate Team Owners:
They manage real estate agents and take care of all administrative work. They are the ones who purchase Mission Control for running and managing advertisements.

design process

The problem

Real estate agents have to contact team owners to run and manage an ad campaign.

Why is this a problem?

Team Owner

Spends excessive time on ad creation, despite it not being part of their role.

Is not in contact with the house seller or aware of their needs.

Real Estate Agent

Do not have the autonomy to create and budget their ads.

Cannot track performance and make adjustments to their ads.

The current mission control dashboard in not scalable and intuitive to use.

The Goal

How might we…

Allow agents to independently fund and run their own ad campaigns

Make the dashboard scalable and intuitive

Research

Understanding the users

To create an agent's dashboard, we began by exploring the team owner's Mission Control to identify the tools and features available to them. This platform, indirectly used by agents, served as our starting point. The team conducted a thorough audit of the platform to evaluate its strengths and areas for improvement.

To deepen our understanding, we decided to conduct primary research to observe how stakeholders currently interact with Mission Control.

What do agent's do? How can we use Mission Control better for them?

To gain a deeper understanding of the work agents do, we decided to map out their user journey. Our goal was to explore the tasks they perform, when and how they create campaigns, and how they attempt to access Mission Control, given that they currently do not have access to it.

How do real estate agents use mission control?

The request the team owner to run their ad

They use it to launch ads

We conducted interviews to learn what agent's want

stakeholders interviewed

Semi-Structured

interview method

different teams interviewed

150+

Insights collected

Interview conducted on zoom

Figjam file of insighst collected

Key Takeaways

All

agents want the control to modify and pause campaigns directly

All

agents want the immediate access to any lead generated

70%

agents want to add their own images to the ads

55%

users find it frustrating to contact finance team to add/change payment method

“We want to launch our own campaigns and have immediate access to every lead that is generated.“

-Real Estate Agent

“We want to launch our own campaigns and have immediate access to every lead that is generated.“

-Real Estate Agent

Pain points > Opportunities
The pain points identified during the interviews revealed key areas for improvement and opportunities to enhance the dashboard.

Feature Prioritization

Creating an MVP

While the four insights mentioned above represented the primary takeaways shared by multiple interview participants, we also uncovered numerous pain points and feature suggestions that significantly expanded the scope of our work. As this project was part of our curriculum under the Studio Project course and spanned only 4.5 months, we had to strategically narrow the focus. By scoping down and prioritizing key features, we ensured the delivery of a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) within the timeline. All other features and suggestions were documented for future consideration.

Existing Features
In Team Owner's Access

Campaign Creation

Campaign Insights

Budget Information

Play and Pause ads

MVP Features and undertakings
from interview insights

Streamlining ad creation process

Lead details

Save Payment Details

Control over Campaign

Future Scope

Performance Overview

Ad preview

Budgetting

Branded ads

Targetting Control

Access Management

Team Owner's Dashboard

Lead Allocation System

Designs

Testing, Iterations and Different Fidelities

Building on insights from the interview and the features we derived from it, we explored various layout options. Our initial round of ideas were paper sketched which were then iterated upon and taken to Figma for digital wireframes. We conducted usability testing and evaluation with stakeholders and iterated upon those before jumping to high-fidelity designs.

Low Fidelity Sketches

Digital Wireframes + Iterations

Usability testing on Zoom

Design System

Ensuring accessibility and scalability

The team developed a brand-new design system to enhance the portal's accessibility and scalability. Why? An audit revealed significant design pattern inconsistencies, leading to usability issues. Moreover, scalability was a key goal, making it essential to create a system that could seamlessly accommodate new features without concerns about design patterns or component consistency.

Final Outcome

A scalable and intuitive mission control for real estate agents

Navigation

Before

Horizontal Navigation

The existing navigation functioned adequately but posed scalability challenges for the portal. Its limited space restricts the ability to accommodate new features effectively.

After

Vertical Navigation

Shifting from a top horizontal navigation bar to a side vertical bar to make space for any future pages or features. Introducing nested links to retain any page hierarchy.

Campaign Listing

This page is the landing page for the dashboard

The first section of this page is the launch section. It allows the agents to run campaigns for selected properties instantly. The goal behind this was to encourage agents to run more campaigns (business goal).

The second section is the list of all active and inactive campaigns.

Defining data points on campaign listing table

After

I re-thought the information displayed on campaign listing tables. It was tricky to decide what information is displayed on the limited real-estate of the table. The first six columns are all different data points which were essential to help an agent differentiate between ads (since they might run multiple ads for same property). The last six columns are budget, performance and actions.

Before

Campaign Creation

The team enhanced the campaign creation process and enabled users to seamlessly switch between different campaign types during setup.

We restructured the process into steps, and added a new feature to upload custom images.

Before

The current campaign creation process takes place within a pop-up, which confines a large amount of information to a small space. This results in many smaller functionalities being overlooked or underutilized since they are easily overlooked in a cluttered layout.

After

We gave campaign creation a page of it's own and restructured the workflow into four clear steps, reducing complexity and making each phase less overwhelming for the users. Additionally, we allowed the user to preview the template in the same workflow.

What's New?

An option to upload custom images allowing real-estate agents to personalize the ads.

A campaign confirmation page which can be revised from the list of campaigns.

Notifications

Notifications were relocated to the top-right corner, aligning with industry standards for better visibility and accessibility. Additionally, agents can receive notifications via email and SMS, ensuring they don’t miss any leads.

Learnings

How did this project help me?

Design Research

This project provided me with exposure to conducting design research to support rationales.

Feature Prioritization

This project gave me hands-on experience in scoping a project and determining what to include or exclude.

User + Business Needs

This project enabled me to design with a strong focus on business needs

New Domain

This project was insightful in learning how to design for a new field or industry without fully immersing in it.

Let's connect and brainstorm possibilities

+1 (225) 220 4398

Write to me at: as221@iu.edu

Bloomington, IN

Made on Framer

2024

Let's connect and brainstorm possibilities

+1 (225) 220 4398

Write to me at: as221@iu.edu

Bloomington, IN

Made on Framer

2024

Let's connect and brainstorm possibilities

+1 (225) 220 4398

Write to me at: as221@iu.edu

Bloomington, IN

Made on Framer

2024