Orbital Witness is legal prop tech product targeting the commercial real estate lawyers. Most of its components were not rethought after the initial release. In less than two weeks, I was heading a significant and ambitious updates in the design and complete architecture of the product.
I still remember the very first day when I got right away pulled into a user session with the head of product. At first, the product seemed a bit complex to understand since I was all new to the field of property law. But, as I got familiar with it and as well by conducting the user research, it was clear that the product needed a re-design of several components to make it more intuitive and usable.
Revolutionising the real estate due diligence
Launched in 2018, the aim is to offer a simple automated solutions for property due diligence for the users to get clear understanding from the get go, so they know where to start and where to focus from day one . i.e., even a non-legal personnel or a business user could pick, issues/ red flags based on different types of generated reports and take actions based on them.
With a vision of making property transactions radically more transparent, understandable and efficient. We offered an easy access to property information and helped visualise, easy to navigate the complex assets.
By 2021, Orbital Witness had helped lawyers on thousands of projects to understand and navigate thousands of properties and save millions minutes. Thus, thereby followed various design and usability challenges.
Old platform design
Current platform design
Setting the initial goals
Our goal of the project was to provide a better experience on top of the existing, adapt to growing business needs and bring in more features so that to attract more versatile users.
Hence our high-level goals are as following:
1. Make the setup process as quick and intuitive as possible.
2. Give business users better control over the interface by point and click approach.
3. Keep it less clumsy yet provide an engaging experience.
4. Avoid designing of new UI components
1. Make the setup process as quick and intuitive as possible.
2. Give business users better control over the interface by point and click approach.
3. Keep it less clumsy yet provide an engaging experience.
4. Avoid designing of new UI components
Crazy 8 session sketches 1
Crazy 8 session sketches 2
Crazy 8 session sketches 3
“Finding the perfect balance between assumptions and validations.”
With each session we iteration the roadmap and the prototypes of the potential features. This involved understanding some complex real estate transaction and the multiple data sets needed to process it. Ultimately we developed a roadmap that would help the users get answers faster and in one place. While at the same time strengthening the data science required to make the product smarter.
Initial brainstorming
Creating a user journey
Designing the new navigation for the entire product
Discussing the edge cases
Challenges we faced
One of the biggest challenge was to understand the use cases. Being a designer with no legal background I solely depended on the user feedback to discover problem areas and then the potential for an automated solution that the users will actually use. Some of the biggest challenges were, depending on the law firm size, nature of work, designation and internal processes, the solution would either fit like a glove or be completely useless to some.
Defining the what, why and who's was paramount before we even began considering a problem. Conducting regular design feedback/ critique sessions internally helped strengthen everyones understanding of a problem and the potential solution.
Regular user sessions helped us align business and sales strategy with the product roadmap and helped us gain some champion users that led the charge in championing our product within their organisations.
Initial "MVP" ideas shared across the company
Initial "Bold & Ambitious" ideas shared across the company
Final design for iterated MVP - 1
Final design for iterated MVP - 2
With constant iterations and feedback cycles we got some amazing feedback for the features we rolled out and users were excited to participate in the sessions to help us understand their problems better and improve the solutions. Most of the usability testing and analysis was done with the help of the prototypes and by watching LogRocket sessions. Some interesting sessions were shared with the company internally to help them understand the problem in the scoping phase and also to demonstrate impact of the releases.
Few Takeaways:
Validate as many assumptions as you can:
There is always a tendency to get started with the solutions after hearing the design challenges which lead to faulty design outcomes. Try to guess less and focus more on the user, business aspects to better form the actual design challenges.
There is always a tendency to get started with the solutions after hearing the design challenges which lead to faulty design outcomes. Try to guess less and focus more on the user, business aspects to better form the actual design challenges.
Empathize, Empathize and Empathize:
Empathy is one of the core elements of the design process. Spend as much time you could to understand the user’s perspective and context in and out.
Empathy is one of the core elements of the design process. Spend as much time you could to understand the user’s perspective and context in and out.
Define what success looks like:
For designs its hard to judge if the proposed designs work well in the real world. Also, it is not just about the analytics numbers. Setting up a framework helps in exploring the problems in the right way and eventually leads you to an accurate outcome.
For designs its hard to judge if the proposed designs work well in the real world. Also, it is not just about the analytics numbers. Setting up a framework helps in exploring the problems in the right way and eventually leads you to an accurate outcome.
Schedule regular design critique sessions :
Always welcome the stakeholders to join the brainstorming sessions. This way you can understand different perspectives like product owners, directors, product managers, etc. Design critique is also a powerful way getting the feedbacks and chance to unveil few points that you have never even thought of them.
Always welcome the stakeholders to join the brainstorming sessions. This way you can understand different perspectives like product owners, directors, product managers, etc. Design critique is also a powerful way getting the feedbacks and chance to unveil few points that you have never even thought of them.
Just doodle on:
So true! By just putting the ideas on paper led to many discussions that led to some sophisticated MVP ideas. Doesn’t need to be a well polished design to get the conversation going.
So true! By just putting the ideas on paper led to many discussions that led to some sophisticated MVP ideas. Doesn’t need to be a well polished design to get the conversation going.
and counting...