UX / UI

Reverse Prospecting (Buyers)

With the recent release of a feature called MLS Search that enabled our real estate agent users to search their MLS for listings on the market, from within the Brivity CRM, there was a logical next step in expanding upon this MLS Search feature. This next step aimed at answering this question: "Which buyers in my database would be a good fit for this specific listing on the market?" (Buyer Reverse Prospecting). In fact, the project also initially was intended to answer "Which contacts in my database have a home that would be a great fit for these buyers?" (Seller Reverse Prospecting) but it was halfway through the exploration phase that we decided to postpone seller reverse prospecting to a later date to cut down on scope.

Role

UX Researcher

Lead UI Designer

Resposibilities

UX Research

UI Design

Prototyping

project length

4 Weeks

Feature Research

Brivity CRM is a young product when we compare it to its competitors in the Real Estate CRM landscape. Because of this, a lot of the features I have worked on at Brivity, have had strong competitor features as a reference point for me to investigate & understand so that we could take note of what worked best for them within our own product. In this particular project, a stakeholder had a clear understanding of what he wanted. A competitor, BoomTown, had a buyer match feature for listings within its MLS Search feature. It was my job to investigate, document, evolve and adapt this feature into our own CRM.

Be Prepared

Part of my initial process when working on feature evolutions, before I ever start competitive analysis, and after the project kickoff call, is a targeted investigation of the feature we are working on out in production so that I know its ins and outs. With the intention of being as empathetic as I possibly can, inserting myself into the shoes of my users, who are coming into this feature from multiple directions in their journeys. Often, I supplement this feature exploration with methodical analysis of our Product Board insights & feature requests related to this feature. I do this so that when it comes time to do a competitive audit, I know what our users want and need, but also what will bring the most value to our product, saving us dev time.

As a designer, when I am not at work I am intentionally observing the products I use in every day life. This builds up my design intuition so that I can trust my refined gut instincts heading into the

Part of my initial process when working on feature evolutions, before I ever start competitive analysis, and after the project kickoff call, is a targeted investigation of the feature we are working on out in production so that I know its ins and outs. With the intention of being as empathetic as I possibly can, inserting myself into the shoes of my users, who are coming into this feature from multiple directions in their journeys. Often, I supplement this feature exploration with methodical analysis of our Product Board insights & feature requests related to this feature. I do this so that when it comes time to do a competitive audit, I know what our users want and need, but also what will bring the most value to our product, saving us dev time.

As a designer, when I am not at work I am intentionally observing the products I use in every day life. This builds up my design intuition so that I

Part of my initial process before I ever start competitive analysis, and after the project kickoff call, is a blitzkrieg of sorts - me clicking around the product feature we are working on as it stands today so that I know its ins and outs. With the intention of being as empathetic as I possibly can, inserting myself into the shoes of my users, who are coming into this feature from multiple directions in their journeys. Often, I supplement this feature exploration frenzy with methodical analysis of our Product Board insights & feature requests related to this feature. I do this so that when it comes time to do a competitive audit, I know what our users want and need, but also what will bring the most value to our product, saving us dev time.

As a designer, when I am not at work I am intentionally observing the products I use in every day life. This builds up my "design intuition" so that I can trust my refined gut instincts when I am in the blitzkrieg/click-to-understand and diagnosing phase of our feature (As it stands today before we branch off into a new direction with it). I have come to trust my first thoughts & inclinations when it comes to UX audits. I am a talented designer, and I know when something feels off, or if it needs improvement. I document these red flags by screenshotting, inserting into the project proposal page of my figma file, and then annotating over them.

The project proposal page, is for me to document my plan of attack on a project, so that I can communicate the scope of the project to my supervisor and get a thumbs up before I dive into weeks of designing. This has served me well at Brivity in our startup mentality, where design work is accomplished quickly and where we build our design direction brick by brick transparently and openly with frequent check-ins.

diagnosing phase of our feature before we branch off into a new direction. I have come to trust my first thoughts & inclinations when it comes to UX audits. I am a talented designer, and I know when something feels off, or if it needs improvement. I document these red flags by screenshotting, inserting into the project proposal page of my figma file, and then annotating over them.

The project proposal page, is for me to document my plan of attack on a project, so that I can communicate the scope of the project to my supervisor and get a thumbs up before I dive into weeks of designing. This served me well at Brivity in our startup mentality, where design work is accomplished quickly and where we build our design direction brick by brick transparently and openly with frequent check-ins.

can trust my refined gut instincts heading into the diagnosing phase of our feature before we branch off into a new direction. I have come to trust my first thoughts & inclinations when it comes to UX audits. I am a talented designer, and I know when something feels off, or if it needs improvement. I document these red flags by screenshotting, inserting into the project proposal page of my figma file, and then annotating over them.

The project proposal page, is for me to document my plan of attack on a project, so that I can communicate the scope of the project to my supervisor and get a thumbs up before I dive into weeks of designing. This served me well at Brivity in our startup mentality, where design work is accomplished quickly and where we build our design direction brick by brick transparently and openly with frequent check-ins.

Research Phase

Research Phase

Internal research
Internal research

The project proposal page of my figma file. Annotations on the CRM out in production, communicating & documenting project scope with details of what I plan to work on.

The project proposal page of my figma file. Annotations on the CRM out in production, communicating & documenting project scope with details of what I plan to work on.

External Research
External Research

Screenshot of BoomTown's user flow for viewing buyer matches. I document competitor flows within the project proposal page as well, which helps set the stage for MVP requirements for the new feature.

Screenshot of BoomTown's user flow for viewing buyer matches. I document competitor flows within the project proposal page as well, which helps set the stage for MVP requirements for the new feature.

UX Ideation

UX Ideation

Component & screen wireframing in MIRO. (forgive my handwriting, I'm much better with pixels 🙈😊)

Component & screen wireframing in MIRO. (forgive my handwriting, I'm much better with pixels 🙈😊)

UI Exploration

UI Exploration

My figma file filled up fairly quickly with two weeks of explorations, organized by the pages I was working on within the CRM.

My figma file filled up fairly quickly with two weeks of explorations, organized by the pages I was working on within the CRM.

A Path Not Chosen

A Path Not Chosen

While it was fun for me to explore a blue sky option where our users could share out a selection of listings to their contacts on the Contact Index, it was an idea that overshot that of what our competitor had out in production, a nice to have, but ended up being cut for MVP.

While it was fun for me to explore a blue sky option where our users could share out a selection of listings to their contacts on the Contact Index, it was an idea that overshot that of what our competitor had out in production, a nice to have, but ended up being cut for MVP.

Handoff File

Here is a down and dirty view of my handoff file, covered in redlines & dev notes, and usage of the AutoFlow plugin to visualize user flows. We ended up limiting listing sharing to just one listing at a time, a limitation when compared to multi-listing sharing yet an immediate user need we could satisfy sooner.

Any changes to the screens are fully prototype'd so the dev's understand the functionality of the new feature.

Final Flow

While our final design followed a more conservative development approach, cutting down on some other designs I had explored on the lead index screen, we were excited about and proud of the MVP that we built for our users.

While our final design followed a more conservative development approach, cutting down on some other designs I had explored on the lead index screen, we were excited about and proud of the MVP that we built for our users.

Takeaways

As one of the early projects I completed at Brivity, I was still getting a feel for the design and development process at this company. This project taught me how to properly define scope of a project. I spent too much time designing feature-related ideas and rabbit holes that ended up not getting used. I dove into designing too quickly and got caught up thinking too big-picture, and did not spend enough time in the beginning narrowing down what MVP requirements were for this feature.

If I were to start over again, I would have asked more questions in the beginning. Which hopefully would have uncovered that we should have only focused on buyer reverse prospecting, rather than trying to tackle seller reverse prospecting at the same time. I also grew my hard skills significantly in this project. This project required me to use the full extent of Figma’s capabilities with auto-layouts, constraints, overflow behaviors, responsive components, prototyping and more.