HomeLot is a real-estate company that helps people find houses around them, book appointments and inspections with agents, and make purchases for rent, lease, buy, and shortlet.

With a distinct and unevenly regulated sector, the Nigerian real estate landscape is a difficult nut to crack. A transparent listing and dealing solution is the obvious route to go, in order to tackle discrepancies and house challenges as they arise. While I am fascinated by all aspects of User Experience design, I specialize in ideation, storytelling, and visual design.

Design a digital platform that allows users to access properties and listings, as well as make and manage payments.

Allow users to have virtual inspections and make purchases/rent in one place, conveniently.

I led the product design on this project. We started with a round of interviews and discovery sessions to fully decompose and document the pain points of users and the stakeholders. We iteratively made refined changes as we were learning. We employed the services of a business analyst and several lawyers to accurately convey the complexities of a product with mixed or confusing regulations, and simplified the process so that everyday users would not need to worry about the details of a transaction.

RESEARCH - I conducted market and user research

CONSILT - Empathise, Journey map, more research

ITERATE - Design, Mid-Fi Prototype

USER TESTING - We ran a series of tests to identify viable solutions

DEVELOPMENT HAND OFF - Creating documentation to ease engineering process

Based on our initial interviews and research, we defined carved out these user categories

This user: Can view listings Can schedule appointments Can transact (buy/rent)

This user: Can list properties Can assign an agent property Can transact (buy)

This user: Can list properties Can make purchases or withdraw Can sell properties Can manage properties (book appointments) Can transact (buy, sell)

Manages all users on the platform

An interactive website, allowing users to browse through a larger assortment of listings on the platform. Users can preview listings and make appointments without the immediate need to sign up.

User module gives the “Agent” user-type listing and appointment management functionalities. It also allows users (read as agents) to communicate/chat with potential clients (read as tenant/landlord) and manage their sales and transactions.

The mobile app module is targeted specifically for the agents - for on-the-go data capture of listings, and for the customers - for listing search, bookmarking/saving of listings. Although the web application is responsive, this tailored experience is mobile only.

Our research finding identified this module as “problematic”. Our solution is similar to that of ‘Terms of Service Didn’t Read’ (tosdr.org). We give region-based summaries of contract terms in a succinct and clear manner, so that users understand their requirements in a tailored fashion. The searches and results are also curated based on these discrepancies.

This project was quite complex in it own right as if required a lot of research and consulting to complete. We ensured that the product was user-centric while navigating multiple compliance laws and regulations. Research can be very long and demanding. Being proactive to start iterating even before all the facts are gathered can help maintain production rhythm and keep the work moving forward.