Project Dates: 2012-2014

Roles: Lead UI/UX Designer, User Research, User Testing

In 2012, the commercial real estate company REFM hired me to help create their flagship SaaS product, Valuate. The process began with a discovery phase, where I worked with the founder in Washington, D.C., interviewing commercial real estate brokers and investors, potential users of the product.

We performed a small, in person ethnography of a select group of these users, in order to better understand their current workflow, pain points, and opportunities for disruption of the existing, largely desktop-based, valuation tools.

Sample from ethnographic study of potential Valuate users

The basic premise for the software was to create a cloud-based valuation tool, where both brokers and investors could upload existing data, and it would be presented in a clean, standardized format. This data could then be manipulated by adjusting key variables, so that various scenarios could be run and compared.

The main challenge was to create a tool for these users that would be intuitive enough to make the transition from their Excel models (largely the current solution) easy, while retaining most of the flexibility and power of these models (and stripping away unnecessary complexity).

We began with basic wireframe prototypes (because of the complexity of the layouts, hand-sketches were impractical). We then took these wireframes to potential users for feedback, and iterated upon them.

Initial product wireframes

Working together with a team of four developers, I continued to develop the UI and UX for Valuate. To make variable adjustments intuitive for the user, the product required the development of several novel UI elements, such as a slider that would change the equity distribution between the partnership members:

After an extensive period of beta testing and further user research, the product was brought out of beta in spring of 2013.

The product is now in its 3rd year after launch, recently brought on a major enterprise customer, and thousands of users have analyzed over $144B in transactions.