My Estate: A portable estate management solution

overview.

My Estate Mobile App is an estate management and automation system that is divided into two sections - The estate Admin and the Residents. The estate admin has access to control and regulate activities in the estate. The residents on the other hand controls activities pertaining to their individual homes.

the challenge.

The actual focus for this project was to make living in estates easier and to automate some basic functions that is common to practically all estates or unified housing communities. The initial problem that birthed this idea according to the stakeholders was to solve a problem of managing visitors in a tightly secured environment. They had an existing product which they hadn’t launched because the team got stuck in the middle and the process came to a halt. Also the client were not impressed with the interface and the experience of the app. They said they were not delighted to use the app and they don’t think the end user would too.

The client wanted a unique and appealing solution that delivers and multiplies value in each element of the project and also, convenient to manage homes quickly and easily.

the process.

After listening carefully and meeting physically with the business owners, and some brainstorming, assessing their existing product, I diagnosed and advised a redesign and full overhaul of the product. I performed heuristic analysis prior to that prescription on the product and also did some further user testing while carefully taking notes of the underlying problems. The research really helped with a lot of valuable insights and ideas used in the project and to narrow down a roadmap.

The UX phase began with getting to know the users and their behaviours. I started redesigning the information architecture which helped me define which parts of the application needs more optimization.

user flow:

The next step was to create the user flows, which defined all routes in the user journey through the app. I defined two groups, the home owner and estate admin.

style guide.

To keep the visual elements appealing and delightful, it was crucial to create a set of rules and guidelines that is clear and intuitive for end users. These includes customizable UI components, identifiable brand colors, clear CTAs, etc. Typography should reflect simplicity, readability and how easily it is for users to find content within the product.