Our team opted to utilize elements of Lean UX in our project, allowing for quick iteration and clear productivity through the use of sprint cycles. This process relies heavily on teamwork and documentation, and with that it will drive the rest of the design process. Communication, collaboration, and iteration were the three main ingredients when creating our design solutions for the app.
We conducted a user questionnaire to gauge people's investment preferences in terms of types, as well as their investment habits. These are the highlights of the insights we discovered when working through the questionnaire results and feedback.
- 78% of participants are more willing to make investments with a lower minimum money.
- Participants on average would check their portfolio 5-6 times each week.
- The overseas real estate investment market, especially commercial and residential seems more attractive to the users.
- 85% of participants prefer to make short-term investments so they can trade easily based on the market.
Michelle does not have a big budget for real estate so she wants to make a fractionalized investment but she couldn't find a suitable solution in the market.
Jason is interested in real estate investment but he feels the market in the US is saturated. He wants to make investments in other countries outside the US.
Zach has rich experience in trading but he couldn't find short-term investment in the real estate market. He is looking for tradable projects to maximize profit.
In order to construct a concise and solid foundation for Terratan, I had to venture out and see what the prominent investment applications were already doing and what user goals they were not reaching. I evaluated several features deemed vital from user surveys and identified which ones Terratan could capitalize on to have a leg up over other applications.
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Plotting a list of the possible features onto a graph helped narrow down what was absolutely crucial for delivering the MVP and would be built upon further down the road. A big draw of using this application is to be able to understand the projects and trade them easily. We also would like to stimulate more purchases for the business goal.
Begin with a questionnaire, it is better for us to understand the preference of the users and make personalized recommendations. The MVP includes three main functions: buy, trade and track.
Working through a couple of preliminary sketches, we realized some of the ideas and layouts that we were thinking of just wouldn't work. Not only were we able to quickly communicate some of the ideas we had a hard time explaining to each other, but we were also able to take them and spark more discussions as well as quickly filter the good and bad ideas out.
We did several rounds of usability testing and design sprints of the main pages to optimize the prototypes.
Dashboard (Version 1)
Emphasize visualization of the assets and the profits.
Dashboard (Version 2)
Add market to increase exposure rate and add holdings in the portfolio.
Dashboard (Version 3)
Place market to the bottom and add a watchlist to stimulate purchases.
Project Details (Version 1)
Showing the pictures and description of the project.
Project Details (Version 2)
Emphasize the price and annual return. Quotes from the stakeholders.
Project Details (Version 3)
Add video and categorize different information under subtitles.
Challenge 1
Embed two steps of the questionnaire to collect investors' preferences for the personalized project recommendations, increasing the purchase rate.
Challenge 2
With a readable cards layout, people can easily pick up the projects, and place an order in a few steps.
Challenge 3
Personalized recommendation projects are put in the dashboard, trading platform, and portfolio to stimulate more purchases.
Challenge 4
Investor Education is a platform for stakeholders - Terratan, investors, and real estate to communicate and share thoughts, building a community and improving the reputation of Terratan.
Using calm tones of color with dark and light blues, we were able to sell the Terratan of Convene as a reliable platform. We utilized color sparingly throughout the platform to convey which elements were interactable and should be paid attention to within the product.
Working with a PM with a rich business background, I got a chance to practice "product thinking". Although I was not able to fully flesh out other features and designs I wanted to within Terrtan due to time constraints, it's not to say I won't try to incorporate them in future projects down the line.