Mobile App

MVP

Prototyping

Product Strategy

Supra - Managed Access

Introducing the Supra One app to external users by allowing agents to grant access to their lockboxes to these users. Agents can grant access and manage invitations sent. For the granted users, giving them the ability to use a limited version of the app to access the properties.

About

Real estate agents may want to hire external users to help assist them with their property. They will need to grant these users a Managed Access so that they can enter the property during a specified date and time. This phase of the project revolves around granting access to external users, managing the access, and creating a limited app for the new users to access properties. Since this is an entirely new section our Access pillar, our goal was to create an MVP that will allow our users to conduct the core actions, with the goal of iterating on this later.

Timeline

Dec 2023 - Aug 2024

Team

1 Designer, 1 Software Engineer, 1 Product Manager

INTRODUCTION

How are agents added to the feed?

Agent profiles from the legacy Supra systems are added into the new Supra One platform via an API. These agents will show up on the MLS Staff Admin's feed of users but will not have access to the new app just yet. MLS admins will need to send an invite to these users to activate their new accounts and download the app.

INTRODUCTION

How are agents added to the feed?

Time Problem

Admins need to send account invites to upwards of 1000 people - sending these individually will be time consuming.

INTRODUCTION

How are agents added to the feed?

Different use cases

There are two scenarios where a MLS admins will need to send invitations. Together with the PM, we wrote down each use case to determine what actions they are going to take, how many users are they inviting, and what is the outcome of this invitation, before looking into solutions.

MLS is newly onboarded and agents have just synced into Supra One

Since this is a first time interaction, we consulted with engineering and concluded that an invitation can automatically be sent when agents are newly imported. Since admins need to send an invitation to everyone anyways, it saves them a step from their workflow.

Sending invitations post-import

Admins may send invitations to up to 10 agents at once to invite them to Supra One. This happens after the initial mass invitation is sent.

Different use cases

MLS is newly onboarded and agents have just synced into Supra One

Sending invitations post-import

Admins may send invitations to up to 10 agents at once to invite them to Supra One. This happens after the initial mass invitation is sent.

Sending invitations post-import

Admins may send invitations to up to 10 agents at once to invite them to Supra One. This happens after the initial mass invitation is sent.

Sending invitations post-import

Admins may send invitations to up to 10 agents at once to invite them to Supra One. This happens after the initial mass invitation is sent.

Current Experience

While admins can view all users in the user dashboard, they cannot send an invitation to these users to allow them to activate their account and download the app. The only way an agent can access Supra One is through this email that must be initiated by the admin.

Opportunity

We have an opportunity here to allow admins to send individual and bulk invitations to users so that they can onboard and start using our app. This step is crucial as it initiates the onboarding process and will contribute to our company metric of increasing user adoption.

Current Experience

Opportunity

Current Experience

Opportunity

Flows to be done

Send individual invite

Admins can send an invite to a single user.

Send individual invite

Admins can send an invite to a single user.

Send individual invite

Admins can send an invite to a single user.

Bulk invitations

Admins can select multiple users and send an invitation to these users.

Bulk invitations

Admins can select multiple users and send an invitation to these users.

Bulk invitations

Admins can select multiple users and send an invitation to these users.

PROCESS & REASONS

Sending invites individually

There is an action column on the user dashboard where admins can choose to assume or chat with the user. These two buttons are fixed to the screen. Since we're adding an additional action, I changed the actions to an action menu. This design is more scalable as we can add more user specific actions to this menu in the future.

Bulk invitations - should we add an invite button?

The first approach I explored was adding a send invite button to the screen. Admins would multi-select the users and click this button.

Problems with the button approach

While this would've been a quick and easy solution, we didn't want to just add another button onto a convoluted screen.

The placement is odd

This is an action an admin would take, putting it next to filter options does not make sense.

Actions buttons are too far away from the users selected

This adds to the placement issue whereby the action buttons are not directly linked to the users - it's confusing to know that these are actions an admin can take.

What about a toolbar?

While looking at other apps with a variety of actions, I noticed a common theme - a toolbar! This would allow us to add any bulk action and have it fixed on the screen. This asset already exists in another part of our platform so it can easily be recycled, we can reuse this element for other bulk actions, such as assigning lockboxes, and it is scalable if we want to add more actions in the future.

Design Validation Findings

My PM and I conducted a series of usability tests with MLS admins to see what they thought about the action toolbar. Constraints: Our sample size was small since we were only able to test with 3 admins. We had to rely on our internal domain experts as well for feedback. Our users are around 50-60 years old and are typically not technologically inclined.

It was hard to find at first

The toolbar is a new feature they haven't seen before so at first glace they didn't know the actions were there. After prompting them, it was easy for them to take action.

Waiving fees

There was a concern about having the ability to waive activation fees. This was something not known to us and we will need to consider it for the next iteration.

ITERATING BASED ON FEEDBACK

Revisiting the toolbar

Although admins struggled with finding the toolbar at first, after prompting them, they were able to use the toolbar with ease. As with every new feature, there is a slight learning curve and admins were able to adapt to the updates. We decided to stick with this approach and ensured that we included a proper walkthrough via appcues so that we can demonstrate how admins can use this new toolbar once implemented. I reached out to our appcues team to set this up.

Waiving fees

We did not address the ability to waive activation fees in the initial design. Individual invites and bulk invites will need to waive activation fees if it is active in the contract. For individual invites, I added a checkbox and freeform textbox to explain the reason. For bulk invitations, a similar approach but within the popup.

Waiving fees

FINAL DESIGN

Sending invitations to Supra One

Admins can do various actions for their users which are now under an action menu. They can choose to send an invitation to this user and waive an activation fee.

Bulk action toolbar

When multiple users are selected, a toolbar will appear with bulk actions that are applicable to that dashboard. For users, they can send an invite and export .csv.

Configuring multiple invites

When sending bulk invitations, admins can see all agents selected, easily remove them from the list, and choose to waive activation fees if applicable.

Learnings and Impact

User testing can uncover missed requirements

The integrations project is massive as a whole and with that comes with its own complications. We have many requirements for each feature and sometimes specific requirements may get omitted. It's always risky implementing new ideas that our users aren't use to and our stakeholders were reluctant with that idea. After doing user testing, it demonstrated that users can learn new interactions and it also gave us insights on actions that we missed.

Tackling similar problems together

While working on this feature, I was simultaneously designing the ability to assign multiple lockboxes to owners and agents. Instead of coming up with two distinct features, I was able to think about one solution that can be modified to suit the needs of that screen. It saved time for the product team since we can tackle two projects at once and saved time for the engineers since we're reusing functionality across different parts of the app. It also introduces a common action for users to get use to across our platform!