Nicole Zhu | Alphax

Alphax

Deliverables

Research Insights, Wireframes, interactive prototypes, implementation strategy, Branding elements

Role

UIUX/Product Designer

Team

UIUX Designer * 4

Design Lead * 1

Engineer * 2

UIUX Designer * 4

Design Lead * 1

Engineer * 2

Duration

2 months (06/2023-08/2023)

INTRO

Project Summary

Pie Property is a single family residential investment group & developer in Bay area. In this project, our team is working as contractors for Pie Property to design their crowdfunding platform, which aims to help the company to transform into a Fintech company from a traditional real estate investment firm while expand their business. We created design to help Pie Properties attract more users and increase their conversion rate.

Most Memorable Challenge

→🌀Stakeholder Ambiguity in a Startup Environment

In the dynamic startup environment, we work directly with stakeholders who, unlike PMs, often lack clear requirements for website features and design. This requires proactive communication on our part, continually seeking feedback to align our vision with client expectations and ensure project coherence.

What I Learned

👀 Visual Clarity for Better Feedback

We found that clients often struggle to give feedback on user flow and information architecture. Visual presentations, like wireframes, help them understand our ideas clearly and provide more constructive feedback.

🙅🏻‍♀️ Don’t Wait for 100% Confidence

I also realized that while it’s important to understand the product and business before designing, waiting until 100% confidence will be too late. Sometimes, we just need to start designing and refine our understanding through feedback and testing.

What you can expect

Stay tuned with my most challenging project!

I will elaborate two chapters to show how i drove design direction and how to make data-informed design decision

What i present here is just the highlights of the story. If you are interested in the whole story, let’s talk!

Now let's start the journey! 🪄

CHAPTER 1

From chaos to clarity:

How I Drive Design Direction 🏆😎

From chaos to clarity:

How I Drive Design Direction 🏆😎

Initially：NO IDEA. NO SCOPE.

BUT WHY?

I think the problems that i cared about were not solved. I’m not sure why we are doing this project, what’s the objective, what’s the KNOWN and UNKNOWN.

STAKEHOLDERS INTERVIEW

I conducted stakeholder interview to explore current business and product insights

PROBLEM

Current user experience is fragmented

User interviews revealed that current tasks are handled across multiple touchpoints, like email and phone calls, causing friction in the user flow and reducing efficiency.

User Flow Stages

Reaching out users

📧 📞

Clients are reaching out to users by email and phone call

Consultation

📧 📞

When clients want to know more about the fund and company detail they need to schedule a call via email

Identification

📧

User identification verification is through email

Sign contract and view document

📧

At the last step, users need to sign contract and receive all document through email

GOAL

Then i defined our goals for both client and users

Create a centralized platform to help clients company to move their business online while attracting more users to sign up and invest.

USER

Create a centralized platform to help clients to invest easily

But we still don’t have clear design direction 🤔

EXPLORE

Exploration to define our design direction

We conducted the following methods to uncover user needs, synthesized our findings, and defined our design opportunities.

Following is what we got

HMW

The HMW question helped us clarify and affirm our design direction.

👐 How might we build trust with users?

ℹ How might we provide users with information to help them make informed decisions?

Design opportunities

These are the features we decided to include after discussion.

Map View

Design a map view to see the amenities around the property

Return Calculator

We conducted a competitive analysis on 10 similar products such as Ark7, Diversyfund, Yieldstreet, iintoo, Peerstreet, Crowdstreer, etc.

Now we started crafting ✏️

DESIGN

Design exploration of innovative solution

We explored innovative solution to help users better make informed investment decision such as the compare function.

Rejected by engineering team

We explored innovative solutions, like a comparison feature, to help users compare different funds. However, it was ultimately rejected due to high development costs.

Compromised after consideration

After discussing with the engineering team, I agreed this was a reasonable choice for an early-stage startup, especially since there are currently only three funds available. We decided to put this solution on hold for now and revisit it in the future.

Design Iteration

Browse Offering Page

Option 1

❌can only see limited information of properties

✅Can present more funds at the same time

Option 2

Picked

✅Shows the hierarchy of fund and properties

✅Able to browse different properties in the funds

✅Investment progress bar to show the progress of fundraising

Fund Detail Page

Option 1

✅Flipping card to see the detail of different properties

✅Trigger to sign up and book consultation before investing

❌Incorrect hierarchy of property and fund

❌Too much text

Option 2

✅Interactive map to see the amenity around the properties

✅Return prediction tool

However, we received negative feedback from client...

Lack of User Engagement

While eah option has its upside and downside, clients pointed out that current detail page design is overloaded, which might cause users feel overwhelmed and they are worried that too much text and chart will discourage users’ engagement.

Then we made following changes

Keep the information simple and clear, remove redundant parts
Enhance interaction on the page (details below)

CHAPTER 2

Chapter 2.Functionality, Flexibility, and Fun: Designing Engaging Digital Experiences

I started thinking, how might we improve user engagement? 🤔

Simplicity and user interaction are the keys

Through researching on other competitors, we found that simplicity and user interaction are two important factors that increase user engagement on the pages.

Then we made following changes

Keep the information simple and clear, remove redundant parts
Enhance interaction on the page (details below)

Keep the information simple and clear, remove redundant parts
Enhance interaction on the page (details below)

Design Iteration

Calculator & Map

Before

After

Fixed the hierarchy problem by replacing property cards
Interconnected property cards and property map
Fold calculator to better utilize the space
Users can expand the calculator to see more details

Fixed the hierarchy problem by replacing property cards
Interconnected property cards and property map
Fold calculator to better utilize the space
Users can expand the calculator to see more details

Fund Detail - Return & Risk

Before

After

Changed charts to interactive cards
Users can expand the cards to view more information
Users can also expand the project ROI, annual return, and target irr cards to download their related documents.

Changed charts to interactive cards
Users can expand the cards to view more information
Users can also expand the project ROI, annual return, and target irr cards to download their related documents.

Fund Detail - Return & Risk

Before