Perchwell | Broker Platform
Background
Perchwell is a small real estate technology startup based in NYC. After leaving my previous startup and while working on building Reach, I helped Perchwell design their iOS and Android app.
Perchwell's core business is a platform for brokerages and agents to manage the lifecycle of their sale and rental listings. Like Streeteasy and similary apps, the Perchwell brokerage platform also pushes out listings to real state aggregators like Trulia, Zillow etc.
Unlike apps like Streeteasy, Triplemint, and others that are primarily consumer applications, Perchwell seeks to differentate itself in disrupting the the very old enteprise platforms that NYC brokerages use for listing management. platforms that most NYC brokerages use. from other brokeraThe goal was to redesign the Perchwell App mostly used by real estate professinals with focus on a more consumer friendly experience while maintaining and where possible enhancing the app's utility for agents and brokers.
Project Role
User ResearchWireframingPrototypingUser TestingVisual DesignInteraction DesignResearch
Designing for Perchwell's brokerage platform was a mix of rethinking existing design patterns as well as designing entirely new features like Dashboard and Listing Management. This work was heavily informed by the research and learnings discovered in planning for the redesign of the Perchwell App.
Given the strategy of creating a consumer and enterprise friendly app, we needed to give real estate professionals a way to leverage the more powerful enterprise features from right in the same app that consumers also use.
Additionally, for both native and the desktop web platform, we wanted to share as many components as possible (design and engineering).
Design Approach
The guiding principles in designing the broker and enterprise tool remain the same with one exception - where for the consumer facing app we sought to enable users to explore seamlessly, here wanted to enable real estate professionals to manage their business seamlessly.
Manage seamlessly
- Anything agents and brokers can do within the brokerage web platform they ought to be able to do with the same ease within the native Perchwell app
Search with ease
- Simplify web search and filtering, saving and returning to searches, adding clients to saved searches, settings alerts, searching by address and changing location.
Simple and beautiful design
- Agents are incredibly busy professionals and constantly on the move, and their work requires them to consume vast amounts of information. Simplifying the user interface would be helpful in better facilitating consumption of that information.
Create and customize dashboards at your desk or right from your phone
Find listings and save searches with alerts or yourself or share with clients
Create, edit and manage all aspects of your listings no matter where you are