Real Estate Capital
Introduction
Overview
My contributions
Timeline
2-months
Role
UX Lead
Problem
Goals
01
Production growth
Reduce time of application from 32 days to 5 days.
Invest in People
Reduce Application to Committee cycle time to 20 days.
Technology Innovation & Digitization
Platform modernization
Constraints
Need technology to inform the feasibility of design solutions.
Limited technology involvement
Low Agile Maturity Level
The team is new to agile methodology. While we are starting to inform our team working agreement, the lack of prioritization and capacity allocation from individual contributors risks our team’s velocity and ability to define our product development lifecycle.
Waterfall Metholody
Research
Our project kick-off included breakout sessions, where we mapped critical milestones in real estate capital, from prospect opportunity to portfolio management. We identified key user flows, touchpoints, and utilized sticky notes to highlight pain points along the way. Through synthesis and collaborative review, we pinpointed potential opportunities for exploration in our ideation phase. This initial phase laid a solid foundation for strategic innovation and user-centric design.
Methods
Co-Creation Workshops: Invite users to participate in design workshops where they can collaborate with your team to co-create solutions. This fosters a sense of ownership among users and ensures that their needs are accurately represented in the final product.
User insights
Mapping the experience
Empathy map canvas
James, Loan Borrower
Say
- Who is this person?
- What does this status mean?
- What do I need to do next?
- This is too long.
- Why is there so much information?
Think
- I want to:
- Look at market rates
- Understand if I can lock a rate
- Check on my loan status
- Upload multiple documents
- Know my closing date
Do
- Provide information
- Review documentation
- Email and video calls
Feel
- I wish there was a timeline.
- I want a faster closing process!
Jane, Relationship Manager
Say
- What is outstanding?
- Do I need to re-enter all this information?
- We have too many tools!
- This is slow and very manual.
Think
- Bloomberg
- Treasury rates
- Competitors
- Work from home
- Speed to meet client needs
- Travel to meet with clients
- Smart checklists
- Digital
Do
- Process data of applications
- Create pricing alternatives
- Pre-approval deposits
- Complete pricing and quoting
Feel
- Anxious for change
- Frustrated
- Client frustration from a slow loan application process
Patrick, Underwriter
Say
- Where can I find that information?
- Can we have the offshore team distribute this information?
- The information being collected is confusing our clients.
Think
- I want to have flexibility to adopt underwriting to deal type.
- I need to:
- Share data with multiple audiences to inform decision making
- Review and analyze documents submitted in a short time window
Do
- Spend ~10 hrs in Excel per deal
- Gather information from multiple systems
- Spend hrs in Closer looking for incorrect inputs
- Manually create documents to present risk, mitigate and deal points
Feel
- Frustrated
- I want a faster closing process!
Solution
Following our co-creation workshop sessions, two prevailing themes emerged as key focal points for our strategic direction.
- Participants expressed a pressing need for a comprehensive transaction details feature, catering to the diverse roles involved in transactions, ensuring transparency and efficiency.
- There was a clear demand for an underwriter client portal, providing a secure platform for managing and requesting critical client information, thereby enhancing collaboration and streamlining processes.
These insights serve as pivotal guideposts in our journey towards innovation and client satisfaction.
Transaction details
A consolidated view with immediate action items and a loan tracker centralizes information currently in multiple platforms.
Underwriter client portal
Integrate with Salesforce for facilitating tenant tabs and requesting client information.
Key features
System Simplification
Bulk upload
Upload more than one file and maintain version and document tracking.
Deal showcase
View recent transactions portfolio from KeyBank Real Estate Capital.
Key screens
In our approach to design ideation, we embrace the concept of exploring the art of the possible, fostering blue sky thinking. Our primary focus lies in prioritizing a human-centric experience over a technology-centric one. Recognizing the necessity of interfacing with a multitude of platforms—up to 32 tools—we understood the importance of providing a visual anchor to illustrate what this user flow could resemble, particularly for responsive devices.
Real Estate Capital overview
Enrollment application
Transaction dashboard
Transaction details
Documents
Deal Team
Outcomes
Through dedicated weekly working sessions subsequent to our initial kick-off, we successfully crafted an end-to-end prototype encompassing all essential steps. This endeavor led to:
Leadership buy-in
Business requirements and interactive prototype for borrower end-to-end user experience generated $7.5 million funding for implementation in 2021.
Design scale and reusability
System design is modular to configure internal and external roles to protect client information in the loan application process.
Reflection
While I transitioned roles to pursue another opportunity, I was able to onboard replacement designers (2) to continue in the following areas:
Next steps
- User testing: Ease-of-use metrics to measure effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction.
- Iterative design: Modify design based on user testing insights.
- Implementation: Partner with technology to determine if we leverage Backbase or Salesforce Lightning Design System components.
Takeaways
Invest time in building and establishing a working relationship with cross-functional team members.
By investing in our team working agreements, we were vulnerable about our shared understandings and navigating sharing context for our end users.
Other bits from this experience:
- Leverage existing UX sources to help educate and influence stakeholders, especially on accessibility, complex patterns like drag-and-drop, and bulk edit operations.
- Familiarize yourself with the terminology used for product engagement conversations.