How Might We Help Flip's Clients Price Homes in Their Portfolio?
How Might We Help Flip's Clients Price Homes in Their Portfolio?
Industry
Real Estate
Problem
Flip's clients are financial institutions that own large portfolios of real estate. Flip has a database of proprietary information that can help their clients price their homes more effectively. The goal of this project was to build a tool to help clients with their pricing strategies.
My Role
Facilitate design workshops (remotely), create high fidelity prototypes, conduct user testing, and present recommendations to leadership
Project Timeline
6 weeks
Approach
I use a unique design sprint process that leads a cross-functional team through 4 one-hour workshops. We start with nothing and use workshop techniques to define problems, collect inspiration, sketch ideas, and vote for solutions. After the workshops I prototype the team's ideas (in high fidelity), test with users, and present recommendations to leadership.
​
Read about the details of my design sprint process here.
​
Here's the sprint schedule:
Workshop 1:
Defining Sprint Goals
​
During the first workshop the team collectively defined goals for the sprint. This helped all participants get focused on the same target before generating solutions. Ideas were all created and voted on anonymously, to remove bias.
​
Creating & Voting on Goals
​
Participants individually wrote opportunities in the form of "how might we..." notes. Next, they each voted on the ones they liked best. After voting, the notes were sorted, giving the team a collective consensus on which opportunities to focus on.
I documented the top-voted goals so the team could reference them through the remaining workshops. This helps the team stay laser focused when generating ideas.
Workshop 2:
Collecting Inspiration
​
During the second workshop participants collected examples from other apps that have solved similar problems. At the end of this workshop, the team had a big pile of good ideas to pull inspiration from. This is especially helpful for participants that don't consider themselves creative, or are intimidated by the upcoming sketching workshop.
​
Workshop 2 had 2 steps...
​
Step One: Collect Inspiration​
Each participant individually researched apps that had great solutions. They captured 1-3 examples each, and wrote a quick note about the ones they chose.
​
Here are a few examples from the team:
Step Two: Share With the Team
Participants each took a few minutes to share their research with the working group. They walked through the features they liked and talked about how they related to our project.
​
The ideas everyone collected were documented so the team could reference them during the next workshop as we sketched our own ideas.
Workshop 3:
Sketching Ideas
​
For this workshop I used the "Four-Step Sketch" technique from Jake Knapp's design sprint. It's a simple but effective way to get each participant's detailed ideas out on paper.
​
Here are the 4 steps...
​
Step One: Take Notes​
Participants were given 20 minutes to look at the artifacts we created during the first two workshops, and write notes. No generating ideas yet, just copying things in their own words onto paper. It's simple, but also a bit of a psychology trick. The physical act of writing activates the parts of our brains that are good at creative problem solving.
​
Here's an example:
Step Two: Ideas
Participants were given another 20 minutes to start sketching rough ideas. They were encouraged to sketch as many ideas as possible, and circle the ones they liked best.
​
Here's an example:
Step Three: Crazy 8s
This is a fun but important exercise that also uses a psychology trick. Participants were told to fold a sheet of paper into 8 parts, and pick one of their best ideas from step 2. Next, they were given 8 minutes to draw 8 quick sketches that were unique variations of that idea (1 minute per sketch).
​
Here's the psychology trick. Our brains are wired to solve new problems with old, familiar ideas. This exercise forces us to get our old ideas out in the first 2 or 3 boxes, then challenge our brains to come up with new, creative ideas for the remaining 5 or 6.
​
Here's what it looks like:
Step Four: Solution Sketch
Participants were given 60 minutes to translate their notes, ideas, and crazy 8s sketches into a cohesive solution. I reminded everyone to reference the goals from workshop 1 as they completed their solution sketches.
​
Here's an example of one participant's sketch:
Summary
Each participant sketched 3 pages of detailed ideas. At the end of workshop 3, the team had 24 pages of ideas to work with.
Workshop 4:
Voting on Solutions
​
I asked everyone to submit their solution sketches anonymously. This way the ideas would stand on their own (let the best ideas win, not the biggest personalities or sales pitches). The voting was also anonymous.
​
There are 2 steps to the voting exercise...
​
Step One: The Heat Map Vote
Participants were given time to review each solution sketch and place small, red dots on individual ideas they liked (as many as they wanted). At the end of this exercise he had created a heat map of good ideas.
​
​
Step Two: The Straw Poll Vote
​
During this step, participants were asked to vote once for an overall solution they liked best. At the end of this step, the team had collectively picked a solution to move forward with.
​
The cool part is...even though we picked one participant's solution, the final design ended up pulling ideas from every participant's individual sketches.
​
Here's what the group created. A big pile of everyone's best ideas, and documented agreement on which ones to move forward with.
Summary
The working group started with nothing and collectively defined goals, gathered inspiration, sketched ideas, and voted for solutions, in 4 quick workshops. These sketches and votes gave me a big pile of ideas to work with going into the prototyping and user testing phases of the project.
Prototyping & User Testing
​
After the workshops I prototyped the solutions the group picked. Since most decisions had been made in workshop 4, prototyping was relatively quick (it's even quicker if your team has a good UI kit).
​
The group defined 5 goals for the project. The user testing techniques I used focused on measuring how well our ideas met these goals, in terms of usefulness (does this feature help users solve a problem) and usability (is it easy to use).
​
Here are the 5 goals...to help clients:
​
-
Identify properties that aren't priced well
-
Decide whether to sell at foreclosure, or convey, renovate, and sell later
-
Manage pricing strategy at the property level and portfolio level
-
Justify price changes to their internal teams (legal department, etc.)
-
Understand how their prices compare to similar properties
​
​
The Test Results
​
Participants were given tasks to perform related to each goal, then asked to rate features for usability and usefulness on a scale of 1 to 5. Here are the results:
Summary
​
Flip wanted to help support their clients in pricing their properties more effectively. To collect ideas, I worked with a cross functional working group and facilitated 4 workshops that were inspired by Jake Knapp's version of the design sprint. The team starting with nothing and was quickly able to define goals, collect inspiration, sketch detailed ideas, and pick solutions. I prototyped the solutions in high fidelity and tested them with users for usefulness and usability. Once testing was complete, I presented the team's findings and recommendations to Flip's leadership team. Having the team's ideas prototyped and validated with user testing empowered leadership to make informed decisions on what to invest in.
​
​
​