ClarityNOW

The optimization of a Saas product that brings new functions to the world of Real-Estate by making tracking your business transactions easy.

My Role

UX/UI Designer

UX Researcher

Project management

Tools Used

Figma

Slack

User testing and redesign for

My Key Contributions

Redesigned around 30 pages (responsive)

Created a Figma prototype for user testing

Wrote a user test

Delivered updated designs based on the results from the user testing

Team Players

1 UX Designer/Researcher

2 Stakeholders/Interested parties

Duration

Around 1.5 Months

October - December 2022

The Problem

I was approached by the VP of marketing for ClarityNOW about assessing the state of their CRM’s onboarding experience. During initial discussion, several inquiries where made about the ease of the current user flow and the format of the UI itself.

ClarityNOW users need to be able to navigate through a succinct onboarding flow, while still providing the information necessary to make use of the features.

Here is an example of the onboarding flow before redesign.

Initial Discoveries

During the first week, many design opportunities were unearthed.

Outdated UI

There were many instances of low contrast in the onboarding flow.

There were multiple issues with the UI that were either in violation of basic design principles or WCAG guidelines. The input boxes would take up the whole screen with no apparent break point. Additionally, irrelevant input methods were present in almost all of the input boxes.

Dashboard findings

On all of the sub-pages, the call-to-action (CTA) buttons were far from obvious (the CTA is in the top right portion of the screen; a white button).

One of the bigger issues found with the dashboard was the priority of the information displayed. After the initial onboarding process, you arrive at the dashboard. One of the issues brought up by the VP was the fact that people were failing to complete tutorials for the specific tools once they arrived at this screen.

  1. Information should be arranged by priority, stressing the importance of completing the tutorial so clients get the most out of the platform.

  2. This page also suffered from multiple instances of contrast issues.

Mobile view

The mobile view of the site was not at all optimized. Buttons were crammed to the point that you could barely tell them apart from each other. The overall form was even more difficult to use than the web view. The issues with padding, margin, and consistency appeared to be even worse here.

Redesign

Based on the findings from the discovery week, the onboarding pages were redesigned to meet WCAG criteria. The size of the container was reduced significantly, making it easier to focus on the tasks at hand without having to look across the whole page for every line.

Note: The design for this project was limited to the capability of the CMS the client was using, so the designs for the containers, modals, and other various UI elements were carried over from the first design.

A page from the onboarding flow.

Onboarding Flow

While design was limited by the platform the client was using, rearranging certain elements and ordering them by priority made it easier to navigate.

  • The onboarding tasks were moved to the first spot, highlighting their importance. CTA buttons were placed next to each one of the tasks to further encourage users to complete these important steps.

  1. Contrast issues were fixed

  2. Progress icons at the top were labeled to provide more info about the users whereabouts in the process.

  3. Unnecessary input toggles were removed.

Calls to action (CTA’s) were moved to a very obvious place within the sub-pages on the dashboard. An additional CTA was placed in the center of empty pages to nudge users to get started.

User Research surrounding the Shore Excursions pages

After weeks of redesign, we were finally ready to put designs in front of users. I assisted in writing the test (I’d like to credit Johnny Lau and Cathrine Conoley with the majority of the writing and the final edits). Each designer on the team was given the assignment to conduct a moderated usability study on 2 participants.

Who

Our target participants are active real-estate professionals working in an administrative capacity.

What

During this these tests, our goals where to test the following:

  • Can participants successfully navigate initial onboarding procedures and complete the remaining steps after reaching the dashboard?

  • Is there anything missing from the design? Is there anything that looks out of place?

  • How long does it take for the average person to complete these tasks?

When & How

On the week of October 24, we conducted qualifying surveys, moderated usability studies, and system usability surveys.

6 total Participants

The tests where designed to take around 1 hour for each participant.

The interviews were recorded with consent. The data was then extracted and exported to a single spreadsheet for analysis.

Data Analysis & Synthesis

The test was passed by all participants, and the system usability survey passed at a 81% success rate (65% being the minimum passable score).

A potential market gap was uncovered when 3 of the 5 individuals voiced they wanted to see more functionality with the expense reporting.

"This one, the monthly expenses I found... That one surprised me because if it's just a rough number, then I'm sure someone could just throw a number down there, right? But there's a lot that goes into monthly expenses, so it's pretty complicated to get that accurate i'd Say."

- Participant

"For me, I don't see the benefit to it with what I have in command (KW CRM) unless it was linked with command. Command has designs, it has ad campaigns, it's souped up. It's a one stop shop for everything that we do. The only exception to that is really the expense side of things. The goal setting and the GCI calculation, all that stuff is done within command. For the solo individual it is pretty simple to do, with teams. Which I think this is geared towards primarily, it is very cumbersome compared to what you have".

- Participant

Conclusion

This project gave me some insight into the industry of real-estate. I had the privilege of working with some very creative individuals who were passionate about their craft.

What did I learn?

This was one of a few projects I’ve worked on where I was using a very limited pool of design assets. I learned that design isn’t always recreating every little detail. Sometimes things need to be optimized using a pre-existing arsenal. This forced me to hyper-focus on the user flows. I’m grateful to have been given this challenge.

What would I have done differently?

Looking back there were a few UI choices that I made that I would do differently today. These choices shouldn’t affect the performance/flow, however I believe I could have adjusted a few things. Ideally I would have liked to have a larger participant pool as well. I think having around 8-10 different participants would have given even more insight without having a significant effect on the interview processing time afterwards.

Let’s get in touch!

Do you have a UX Designer shaped hole in your organization? I’m always open to discussing strategic partnerships and contract needs, so please don’t hesitate to reach out.