EasyPeady
Helping Agents Serve Clients Better in Challenging Times | Product Deep-dive
Project Details
Overview
In late 2020, real estate agents were overwhelmed by new COVID-19 related paperwork, specifically the PEAD-V form, required for every home viewing. This created a significant bottleneck, preventing agents from focusing on their clients. SkySlope identified this unmet need and challenged our team to develop a rapid solution.
My role as Lead Product Designer was to spearhead the design and launch of EasyPeady, a web app built to streamline the PEAD-V process. This project quickly evolved into a standalone product, ultimately laying the groundwork for our successful Breeze web app.
Impact
Developed and launched in one quarter
15% uplift in cross-product engagement
Generated a pipeline of new paying users
Problem Statement
Streamline the PEAD-V form so buyer agents can focus on their clients.
Buyer agents were spending excessive time tracking and managing PEAD-V forms for multiple properties and clients. This administrative burden diverted their attention from client support and created inefficiencies in the home viewing process. Our goal was to streamline the PEAD-V form to empower buyer agents to prioritize their clients.
Users and audience
We designed EasyPeady with three key users in mind:
Buyer Agents
One of their greatest challenges is balancing time spent on paperwork versus time spent advising and supporting clients. A clean, simple solution to complete paperwork and ensure compliance would free up their schedule for more customer relationship management.
Buyers
Home buyers don't want to agonize over volumes of paperwork just to view homes; they simply want to sign what needs to be signed to close a transaction. SkySlope data indicated buyers typically spent 10 weeks on their home search, viewing a median of 9 homes.
Seller Agents
Like buyer agents, seller agents struggle to balance paperwork demands with client time. They also want to make property access as easy as possible to encourage potential buyers and streamline the escrow and appraisal processes.
Team & Role
As Lead Product Designer, I collaborated closely with a project manager, a UX researcher, a visual designer, and a team of 6 developers. Our primary business constraint was speed to market; we had to deliver an MVP by the end of Q1 2021. This necessitated a flexible and iterative design process.
Business Constraints
Our biggest constraint was speed to market due to the PEAD-V form being a COVID-19 specific requirement. We knew we needed to release an MVP by the end of Q1 2021. Mid-way through development, we made a crucial pivot: instead of building the PEAD-V tool within our existing paid software, Forms, we decided to build it independently as a free web app. This strategy aimed to entice new users to adopt the broader SkySlope ecosystem.
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Technical Challenges
We needed to create a new authentication solution for users outside our ecosystem while still providing a seamless experience for current users.
After pivoting to a standalone product, we faced the challenge of seamlessly integrating it into the SkySlope product suite to avoid forcing the user to jump through multiple apps. The service journey blueprint had to be completely re-envisioned.
Original service journey blueprint
The strategic pivot necessitated a new service journey blueprint.
Design Process
Like any project, EasyPeady required the team to adapt to development timeline constraints, with constant validation, ideation, and user interface work. The key for this project was to rapidly validate the concept and get a rough idea to development. Once the development team had the user flow, I designed the UI alongside development and iterated as we built.
Validation
Working alongside the Project Manager, I created a Product Requirements Document (PRD) to capture all key information. Once we had identified unvalidated problem statements, key background information, and our perspective of the current user flow, we set out to further validate the business value of the tool.
Research
We conducted extensive research to understand agent needs:
Qualitative Takeaways:
Both buyer and seller agents in California needed to manage PEAD forms, but buyer agents were more likely to report difficulty.
Agents disliked managing PEAD forms but understood their importance.
Most agents had developed roundabout solutions (e.g., listing multiple property addresses on one form) due to a lack of dedicated tools.
Buyer agents, frequently out with clients, lacked computer access to prepare forms on the spot, leading to informal agreements to send signed forms later.
Agents complied with brokerage requirements to submit forms but rarely referenced old PEAD forms.
Quantitative Takeaways:
In 2020, 53% of all real estate transactions in the SkySlope system used a PEAD form; in 2021, that number was 72%.
Buyer agents were 46% more likely than seller agents to report having difficulty with PEAD forms.
Every agent interviewed reported it was "very important" to have the PEAD form readily available.
Market Research:
The only competition on the market was from Glide, which gated its PEAD form functionality behind a paid membership.
Defining the experience
After pitching the MVP and conducting research, I began the UX process by further defining our product goals:
How might we allow an agent to send multiple PEAD forms at once?
How might we use our MLS integration or other sources to auto-populate buyer agent and buyer information on PEAD and other forms?
How might we build in communication to alert agents, via text or email, when a PEAD form is signed by all parties?
How might we automatically send the form to the seller agent, buyer agent, and buyer once the form is complete?
Key features identified were: Create and send PEAD-V, Generate multiple PEAD forms, Optimize data entry with MLS info, and Email notifications. I captured all use cases and corresponding scenarios, then socialized them with the PM to scope the MVP
I defined research-backed use cases and scenarios, then scoped the MVP with the PM.
Ideation
From there, I dove into my standard problem-solving process. It was critical to define the relevant data inputs and subsequently design ideal user flows. By breaking down all the elements of the form, I identified each piece of information the app would need and from which user types it would collect them.
I broke down the form's elements to identify all necessary data points and their source user types.
User flows
My first step was to capture the ideal user experience, including the timing of each email notification.
Next, I examined potential solutions under different scenarios, considering various user paths and challenges.
Finally, I captured all necessary email assets for the feature to function and socialized these design requirements with the larger team.
After discussing all these elements with my PM, we agreed on the ideal user experience and committed to moving forward with it. We also established contingency plans to scale back if technical constraints arose.
Cross-team Collaboration
I led a brainstorming session with the product and engineering teams to generate more solutions. Afterward, developers rated each proposed solution's complexity (1-5), while product designers concurrently ranked its user experience (1-5).
App Flow & Wireframes
Once the ideal user flow was settled, I began translating it into the application's actual steps, rather than just the real-world user actions.
With the ideal user flow established, I focused on defining it within the application's framework, moving beyond theoretical steps to concrete UI.
Major Pivots
At this critical juncture, I had secured PM sign-off on the defined user flows and was already deep into the first pass of UI design, ramping up the development team. However, SkySlope then decided to pivot its strategy: instead of integrating the tool as a new feature within an existing product, we would build it as a standalone app to capture new users.
This strategic shift quickly led me to partner with a visual designer to create new branding for the work I'd already completed.
Old Branding
New Branding
Development
To avoid slowing development, I prioritized redesigning only key unique screens for the new brand and established a basic style guide. This allowed the development team to proceed unimpeded while I simultaneously completed the end-to-end flow and addressed any remaining use cases or edge cases.
Refinement
I collaborated closely with the development team, providing real-time UX solutions during drop-in Zoom calls. As I outpaced development, I refined and delivered more sophisticated solutions.
Launch
With the app built and MVP use cases functional, we launched to a small group of agents. Their feedback provided key insights for improvements and revealed an urgent authentication issue we promptly addressed. Draft, refine, and get suggestions on a report with Canvas Try now
Conclusion
Impact
After launching the tool, SkySlope’s other flagship products experienced a 15% increase in usage.
We began to generate a pipeline of potential new paying users for SkySlope.
We laid the building blocks for a new product, which would continue to be fully fleshed out over the following month.
Retrospective
Our fast build schedule led to one high-impact oversight: after pivoting to a new standalone website, we faced an urgent authentication challenge. This system needed to integrate seamlessly with existing products and function for external users, a critical issue we only uncovered during user testing. In hindsight, I should have conducted a thorough technical audit immediately following the pivot, rather than rushing into UI design.
