Fastighetsbyrån Real Estate Agency
Year 2019Introduction
Background:
Fastighetsbyrån is Sweden’s leading & biggest real estate agency. Today they arrange about a quarter of all property sales in Sweden with around 270 offices and 1,800 employees. They have been operating in Spain since 2008 and in Portugal since 2014, and are currently setting up a network of offices along the Mediterranean coast.They are wholly owned subsidiary of Swedbank. Swedbank is Sweden’s largest bank and one of the most well-known brands in the country. They mediate housing such as villas, condominiums and holiday homes but also empty properties, agriculture, commercial properties and companies.
Project Brief
Creuna was hired to help them with the task of UX, UI and partially CX/EX & Service Design. We work with 2 outside partners, their IT-development partner and another which is responsible for their Branding. Creunas deliverables are the recreation of their massive multilingual website & webservices. We are also helping 2 digital innovative digital tools which not only will streamline and optimize their CX but also will be disruptive within the real estate industry.
The Team
10 people
1 Account Director
1 Project Manager
2 Analytics
1 User Experience Lead
1 UX Designer & strategist
1 UX Designer
1 UI Designer/Art Director
1 Grahic / UI Designer
1 UX Copywriter
My Role/Tasks
UX Designer & strategist
– Co- UX strategy development
– Research & analysis
– Information Architecture
– User Flow & Stories
– Persona
– User interviews
– Interaction design
– Rapid prototyping
– Wireframing
My starting point
The initiation of this project was about 3 months before I started on this project so many of the macro-concept outlines had already been created through workshops and meetings ran by our UX-director at the agency who also was the UX-lead on this project. Although as she was the UX-director and involved in many projects could only attend about 5% of the meetings and discussions & technically I am responsible for driving the UX with the help of a junior UX dsigner who supported me the workload.
Working style
his project’s working method is very dissimilar to the other big project I am working at the firm (Swedish Football Association). Although we work in an agile environment and the development teams are agile developers, this project had a more ‘Lean-UX’ methodology with sketching, wireframing, rapid prototyping, testing/feedback & iteration. We have weekly meetings & also 2 days a week work side by side with the developers.
Tasks & exercises
As this project is live I can’t talk much about it in detail but I can mention the tasks and a perhaps a couple examples of how we designed them. Every design decision is motivated & articulated in detail to show the thought process & how it aligns with for example our road map, business goals or user research.
The daily tasks are everything from Wireframing, Micro UX-strategy, Rapid prototyping, Visual design with the help of excersises such as Card sorting, A/B Testing, Personas & Usibility testing.
Major tasks
Micro UX-strategy
As mentioned before the UX overall strategy had been outlined with broad strokes but the client’s operation is big and intericate with a lot of moving parts. As we contiuned to design and create everything in detail problems would arise which could be everything from the cost of development, their current IT-architecture/CMS, working routine and process etc. Sometimes we had to asjust or even pivot which is quite normal with Lean UX / Agile debelopment.
I was leading these both internal and external meetings but of course I always updated our UX-director so she is always in the loop and when necessary ask for feedback & advice from her.
Wireframing
A large portion of the overall tasks were wireframes both simple and detailed versions. I always sketched them with hand first and after discussion or simply writing down the motives created them on Sketch App. They were presented in meetings where we had to motivate & explain in detail the overall structure, modules, content or something as little as a button. We then discussed it with the client’s team and the developers to get feedback for not only the design but if they are feasible to develop or are aligned with their processes. Sometimes we shared the designs via InVision App before hand for them to see and comment.
Prototyping
We made prototypes either in form of low-fi wireframe prototypes or high-fi with the final design. They were tested by the client ans the developers or the users. Fastighetsbyrån had a group of 400 active users for us to conduct usibility testing and get feedback for adjustment and iteration.
These prototypes were either put on inVision app or for more major tests in person. The prototypes were then made in either Sketch or Adobe XD.
Interaction design
This could be everything from how a module opens/closes, the galleries or detailing the actions and the element’s behaviours such as field validations to create a smooth, easy and seamless user experience across all pages/devices.
Card sorting exercises
We ran a few different card sorting workshops along the way. Some bigger than the other. The main one was to discuss and get insights about the overall ‘Information Architecture’. We also had smaller ones for some specific sections such as the the main menu.
Usability testing
To give a concrete example of our usability testings, one of the tests we performed was to test the behaviour of galleries & if the user’s were comfortable with our hypothesis of scrolling down to see more photos and horizontally to switch between the rooms for efficiency so they don’t have to go back all the time.
I used a method called ‘Verbal protocol analysis’; a method in which the person continues talks while performing a task, reflecting cognitive processes that are going on along with the task. This method allows the researcher to obtain information about cognition, affective responses, strategy acquisitions, use and so on. Verbal protocols were recorded during the task.
As the name implies it is done by the test subjects talk about the tasks they are doing in real-time. In order to understand how a user is approaching the task and how they are reaching a certain solution, we are asking them to “think aloud” and we record the process.
This gave us insights about how to design the galleries and the way they behave.
Ps. They somehow didn’t understand they can do that! It was too smart which makes it dum in UX sometimes.
Navigations
UI Design
We start the UI design after the wireframes have been approved and tested but they are far from being done. They also go through the process of design review, interaction design review and finally testing for re-iteration. We also provide the typography, font sizes, color and element bank etc. Another thing provided is the breaking points for the responsive view of the interafce.
