Creative Director, UI Design, Product Manager
April 2014–October 2015
RE/MAX was looking to update their visual language to co-inside and match with a new national branding campaign, and Homes.com saw an opportunity to leverage their existing technology stack to expand their offerings to an enterprise client.
The Solution
Working alongside the senior account manager, we started an RFP process which won us the contract, leading to a full-stack redesign of their web presence.
My Role
As Creative Director, I was the principal architect in defining the user experience and visual representation based on the national ad campaign. I was also responsible for leading all client-facing reviews and communications while managing creative deliverables and supporting multiple development teams.
An Initial Offer
While working for Homes.com as their creative director we had several real estate providers, both large and small, that we provided website and technology support. One such client was RE/MAX, and their contract with us was about to expire. We saw an opportunity to position our custom in-house responsive template engine to power their real estate listing content as we had previously and add on complete end-to-end design and website support.
To kick off the design process and generate some excitement for a new project. I staged a design competition. One week to design a homepage and an interior page was the challenge. The winner would get a day off and get to work on the project.
Associate Designer Christina Prock was the lucky recipient to design the mocks needed for the RFP. Together, using work from the winning concept, with various internal account managers and product owners as the stakeholder. Christina and I designed the rest of the main pages in the user workflow order, with additional mobile screen examples. The set of RFP mocks still lives on my server.
Running Comps
Initial feedback on our proposal was well received. After a few short months of enterprise-level contract negotiations, we got the green light and were introduced to the RE/MAX team we would be working alongside. They provided us with some brand guidelines, details about their in-development marketing campaign, and clarification on business goals. The main take-aways learned were that in addition to the home search, the promotion of RE/Max’s national network of hometown real estate agents was just as important as their home listings.
Bringing on Senior Designer Rafael Calderon, the three of us revised our site concept to align with these refined goals and guidelines and introduced some new.
After a few rounds of revisions, I found myself one day in March 2015 sitting on the top floor of RE/MAX corporate headquarters in Denver, hearing that the view of the mountains was spectacular when it’s not raining. My goal was to lead a group of 19 senior RE/MAX executives from all departments in a set of design exploration exercises.
I had never attended, let alone been responsible for a client meeting of this caliber, not to mention the number of attendees. This was hands down one of the most intimidating, and interesting meetings I had ever had the pleasure of leading. Amongst a few hours of unexpected questions, stories, and political posturing, design direction was received. Using this client information, my team began our iterative cycle of design.
Establishing a Process
Having received a signed statement of work, I saw an opportunity to merge a website design process I learned while working at an advertising firm with the agile workflow.
Starting with the most complex page of the site, in this case, the profile pages for both agents and houses. Then working outwards, backward through various user flows, leaving the design of the homepage for last. This approach makes the design and approval process more efficient. Since these pages tend to have the most design problems to solve, starting here enables a large portion of the design language to be established early. Then, when you get to the homepage concepts, the majority of the UI issues are solved. Allowing page creation and approval to pick up velocity as a project goes along.
Delivering Results
We delivered a completed website in October of 2015 by using this process. Along with many conference calls and virtual meetings since the client was in Denver, the design team and I were in Norfolk. We also had additional design resources in Tallahassee with project management and development located in Boca Raton.
Working with the development team, I helped visually QA, and test the UI, and UX as we released the new site in phases over a few weeks. Shortly after launch, we happily reported to RE/MAX that their site had received increased traffic thanks to various SEO initiatives implemented with the redesign. We also reported that our target traffic goals for agent profiles saw page view increases of over 300%. This design, with minimal changes, is still live and in use today. Remax.com
