Unison’s Investment Portal Web App
Intro
Unison is a residential real estate investment company that acquires and manages equity in residential real estate. I worked within Unison’s product team as a Product Designer on Unison’s online customer funnel, SEM landing pages, and a investor web portal from 2019-2020.
The Ask
After the 2008 residential real estate crash, investors are now prioritizing transparency in residential real estate funds. Moreover, Unison's unique and sometimes complex investment structures necessitate additional due diligence. The Unison management team aimed to offer increased transparency to its institutional investors regarding Unison's diverse residential real estate investment funds.
The Solution
The solution was to design an intuitive, user-centric investor portal: A platform that offers:
real-time fund analytics
detailed property performance insights
access to reports and market conditions
comprehensive fund guidelines
…all conveniently centralized in one location.
Role
Lead Product Designer
Methods & Deliverables
User Interviews, Site Map, User Flow, Wireframes, Prototyping
Tools
Figma, FigJam, Pen & Paper
Research
In my role as team lead, I utilized the Kick-off meeting to bring together team members and tackle any questions or uncertainties prior to delving into the design phase. This meeting included the Product team and Unsion’s Investment Management (IM) team. This session served as way to dive deeper into the problem and pain-point that was identified by the IM team and establish success metrics.
Kick-off Meeting Results
A Fund’s Whitepaper, and quarterly Financial Statements and Newsletters were disseminated to institutional investers, but it was discovered during the initial kick-off that due to the unique nature of these funds investors wanted additional fund transparency and a centralized place to view this information.
Using qualitative data complied through feedback loops we theorized that a centralized place that provided an inside view of a Fund’s investments, key statistics, guidelines, and easy access to reporting would increase the likelihood of additional investments by institutional investors.
Measures of Success
User Goal: Launch an investment portal with a NPS of 90% satisfaction
Business Goal: Increase revenue through additional investments
User Interviews
We aggregated the feedback from investors to define precise metrics and foundational facts. Despite the relatively small sample size of the survey, each institutional investor accounted for a significant portion of Unsion’s revenue, thus carrying considerable importance.
Key Research Takeaways
I collaborated with the Investment Management team to ideate and sketcch out the platform’s features and components based on feedback from investors. The primary question was” “What fund information do investors want to see” -Our focus group gave us some clear answers.
Centalized Dashboard
A fund dashboard would serve as a centralized platform that would consolidate key information and data related to the fund's strategy, performance, and KPIs. This would enhance the investor’s experience by providing convenient access to key stats, real-time updates on performance/changes in the fund, and visual representation of data.
“I’d like a snap shot of my funds characteristics and activity”
Fund Guidelines
Providing the fund guideline would promote transparency and accountability by setting clear expectations for investment decisions. If there is an exception to the funds general guidelines, investors want to easily access this information.
“Do investments meet the established fund investment guidelines?”
Investment Locations & Details
Visualizing investment properties on a map facilitates due diligence by providing a comprehensive overview of the portfolio's geographical spread. Investors can verify property locations, assess investment market regionality, and identify any geographical factors that may impact property values.
“Are the properties clear of flood zones?”
Reporting
Existing investors in Unison's funds received white papers detailing the fund's strategy, KPIs, and general guidelines, along with quarterly newsletters and financial statements via email. Investors were familiar with receiving data this way so we decided the investor portal would showcase this content while serving as a centralized hub for document retrieval, without supplanting the current method of information dissemination.
“Where can I access last quarter’s financial statements?”
Sitemap
In order to visualize a clear hierarchy I created a sitemap and recieved positive feedback on the structure and content.
Sketches
I sketched out all the primary screens via paper and pen and used figma to create wireframes and add enough content to be able to receive feedback from the team. The goal was to was to create mid-to-high level wireframes with enough detail to provide context to the application’s framework as established in the sitemap.
Wireframes: Low Fidelity
High Fidelity
Outcome
Following approval from the investor management team regarding the design, I delivered the final wireframes and design guidelines to the product team's engineers. Collaborating with them, we developed and launched a website enabling Unison's fund investors to monitor fundamental characteristics, access individual investment locations and performance, and review financial reports. Our subsequent objectives included granting investors access to more detailed analytics and the fund's guidelines.
“Stephen approached a new problem with incredible grit and purpose-built a website that is easily the best of its kind, period. There is no investor reporting website, or investor dashboard tool that I know if that compares with the ease of use, incredible user experience, simple and beautiful design that this dashboard has.”