Home Buying UX Improvement

The Problem: Openn, an online property platform, needed to simplify a high-stakes, multi-step home buying process. The existing experience was confusing and failed to build user trust, which was critical given the significant financial decisions involved.

• Result: The platform's complexity was a barrier to market share growth and their planned expansion into the U.S.
• Core Issue: Users (both buyers and agents) felt a significant disconnect between the digital process and the physical property, creating anxiety and a lack of trust.

As the strategy and design lead on a three-person design team, I drove the end-to-end UX for a complete overhaul of the platform's core user experience.

• My Contribution: I was responsible for the strategic direction, user research, interaction design, and stakeholder management, ensuring the design aligned with user needs and business goals.

My approach centered on simplifying complexity and building user trust.

• User Research: We conducted interviews with both Australian and U.S. users, discovering a key insight: Americans were unfamiliar with the auction process and felt anxious. Users needed to feel a constant connection to the property they were bidding on.
• Information Architecture: Based on this insight, I redesigned the user flow to anchor the experience around the property itself. We moved away from a tab-based system to a streamlined, multi-step process with a persistent "property header" that anchored the user to the home they were trying to buy.
• Usability Testing: We validated our new design through user testing, where participants reported a renewed sense of trust and connection to the property, successfully completing all key tasks without trouble.

I designed an intuitive, stepped experience that simplified the process of filling out required "paperwork" and submitting offers.

• Key Feature: The new design introduced a persistent header that provided a visual anchor for the user, reminding them of the property at every step. This simple change provided a critical layer of context and reassurance.

The project's success was measured by the overwhelmingly positive feedback from users and stakeholders, with all participants in our testing able to complete tasks without issues.

• The Result: The new design successfully bridged the gap between the process and the property, simplifying a complex, high-stakes experience and building the foundation of trust necessary for Openn's market expansion.