About the company
Anow aka Appraisal Now is a SaaS company, providing digital solution for the Appraisers in the real estate industry. It allows appraisers to manage their orders, companies to streamline their process and grow their appraisal business with Anow.
My Role
In my short tenure at the company, as a Senior Product designer, I elevated the experience of one of the most important feature within the Product by collaborating with the VP of Product and developers. In addition to that, I lead the user research and design, in collaboration with VP of product, of a completely new product and workflow that opens up a tremendous opportunity in a new market with different user base.
Problem Statement
In Anow, lenders had the capability of accepting the order for the appraisal. Once it's accepted, the appraisers get's the order information and has to take some key steps in order to finish the appraisal. On analyzing user's behaviour and research, following key problems were identified for the order detail page:
- The Order detail page had many many features that were unnecessary and distracting over the important elements.
- Users were confused about the presence of elements that were not contributing to their process of work.
- Further, it was lost opportunity for interested upgrade users since it was not paywalled appropriately.
"How might we enhance the experience of user on order detail page that will allow them to complete their appraisal more efficiently."
Old Order Details Page
Due to all the visual clutter and busyness on the old order details page, it was getting a tiresome experience for the users. Additionally, the impact of poor user experience was led to the following business problems:
- Scheduling the inspection was being missed, causing the lender to hire staff to make follow-up phone calls with the appraisers.
- Users were interacting with "dead" aspects of the page, expecting the data to be sent to the lender, but it wasn't (like re-assigning to a different appraiser or updating the appraisal fees). This caused confusion and a distrust of the system and the program.
- Report turn time, a critical metric, was high due to an inability to upload reports effectively.
- Anow's customer inbound support was sky high due to costumer confusion.
- Appraiser's scorecards were negatively affected for not following the steps completely, meaning less appraisal orders for them.
- Revision rates were higher due to missing notes from the lender or not communicating issues or changes in timeline back.
Septs 1, 2, and 3 in the image below were neither intuitive nor easily discoverable in the original design.
After removing all the noise
Based on the user research and analysis, after removing all the unnecessary feature and elements from the page, the following information were left, which felt much simple.
User Persona
A shareable user persona that identifies the main needs and motivators of a distinct user group
User Research & Goal
Our VP of product were in direct contact with the clients and gathered lot's of information and pain points from the customer. In addition to that, we had shipright that receives users feedback and hotjar to view user sessions. Upon analyzing both qualitative and quantitative research data, the following goals were set:
- A clear and continual reference to the order.
- Add hierarchy and flow of information
- Darker and larger fonts to improve legibility
- Design with mobile first approach, giving a more concise mobile experience.
- A stronger grid layout to reduce cognitive load
- Ability to view the progress a user has made and remaining tasks left within the order.
Wireframes
Keeping the user, pain points and goal in mind, and after multiple review with the team and devs, I created and finalized the below wireframe for the new Order details page.
High-Fidelity Designs
Using wireframe, our visual designer crafted the high fidelity designs as shown below:
Results
After our team had implemented this new order details page, the feedback was immediate from the lender as well as appraisers — they loved it!
As a result of this improvement, we saw:
- A decrease in customer support calls, chats, and emails for workflow issues
- Appraisal turnaround time was improved by 2 days (a major milestone in the appraisal industry)
- Customers reported having a better relationship with Anow and the lender program
- The lender's satisfaction improved as appraisers' attitudes improved
