Levymate
Giving purpose to a financial tool.
Act 1:
Understanding
The existing levy mate platform was a sophisticated strata funding tool- powerful but without focus.
The MPV of the levymate platform calculating three 'scenarios' of how to fund a building complexes'
We wanted to get clarity on where this tool could help. Enter: discovery.
We wanted to get clarity on where this tool could help. Enter: discovery.
We spoke with a number of affected users - strata managers, SMEs, property experts and owner / investors. We only had a limited window to conduct this early research, so our focus was on the residential market.
In our study we conducted a series of workshops and user interviews across the three key user types.
We also looked into secondary forms of research - online user groups and forums, such as Reddit and Facebook groups, as well as reviewing notes from existing committees and trade magazine and blogs.
This may present like a linear sequence of events, the reality is that this was an on-going process - constantly reviewing, and uncovering more about the problem-space.
Strata Managers work for Owners, they handle the governance of an apartment complex and help keep things moving. They are driven by a need to be perceived as proactive and "on-the-ball". Letting things unresolved creates disharmony and resentment.
Owners are motivated by maintaining predictability in their finances. Unforeseen and unplanned requirements of cash can be stressful and a cause of great distress.
This relationship means there's a push and pull between the Strata Manager and their clients - Strata Managers want decisions to be made on how and when to spend money. Owners want to keep things predictable and affordable.
But unforeseen things happen. Elevators stop working earlier than anticipated. A possum jumps onto a roof and creates a leak. A retaining wall collapses five years before it predicted it would.
What happens next is a decision on how to fund the issue emerges. And that the strata manager presents the owners with options of how to deal with the issue - fund it, or do it later.
The challenge was that since financial loans are hard to understand, and time-consuming to source, they are often not presented as a viable option.
Terry Goodwin
Strata Manager
"So if you can get the majority of the attendees to understand the financial requirements and what's being presented, it's a lot easier to get a budget approved because you've already got the support of the major players.”
Act 2: Bringing purpose to the tech.
Now what
Synthesising the data found us considering a number of options. Proposal builders, email systems and an array of different options. Eventually our focus was in two primary problems. How can we address the strata manager's needs, which were important in their own right for adoption. And second, how can this tool be used to help inform of the options of which a loan is part of that mix.
HMW we create a financial tool that helps owner’s understand their capital expenditure and levy’s better?
HMW help strata managers manage their committees to help make swifter decisions.
Mapping out the moments of pain-a-tunity
We mapped out the occasions in which a strata manage and a committee would need to not only make decisions, but could benefit from having Levymate's financing options available to them. We wanted to find where the decisions are made.
This was a crucial part of the reframing of the financing tool. Unless you're a finance nerd, its not likely you'll organically want to use this tool. A motivation and 'trigger' was needed. The pain and pain-killer.
Mapping out the moments of pain-a-tunity
We mapped out the occasions in which a strata manage and a committee would need to not only make decisions, but could benefit from having Levymate's financing options available to them. We wanted to find where the decisions are made.
This was a crucial part of the reframing of the financing tool. Unless you're a finance nerd, its not likely you'll organically want to use this tool. A motivation and 'trigger' was needed. The pain and pain-killer.
Ready, Fire, Aim
We had to reconsider the existing tool, it's purpose (or lack-there of) and what the data was telling us. We felt comfortable that, even in the limited window he had, that he had our hands around the problem - at least well enough to start prototyping and testing our hypothesis.
The years of experience in product and design have taught me a hard lesson; that no matter how good the platform or app is, adoption is half the battle. Getting people to even consider it as part of their workflow is a huge challenge and so to make that easier you need to show up to where they already are.
We had to reconsider the existing tool, it's purpose (or lack-there of) and what the data was telling us.
Design Goals
We had a number of goals we wanted to achieve with the product's features and capabilities. This centred on the primary problem we wanted to solve
For Strata Managers
Provide a mechanism to plan a capex spend and deal with the unforeseen capex expenditure
Support multiple Strata Complexes
Make distribution of options simple
Help Committees reach a decision for funding
For Owners
Provide consistent visibility between all my funding options
Inform me which decision is the best for me
Help provide transparency to help plan for the future and to avoid surprises
Mastering the critical path
One area we wanted to focus on was considering the 'happy' flow or critical path. We consider this from the perspective we dubbed the 'day 1' day 30 and day 90 view point. The idea being that a platform should be viewed from the lens of a users' journey across different instances.
Naturally, there's variations on what the user can do, but importantly to optimise for the journey we believe the user is required to take.
The artefact below was used to take stakeholders through our approach and get their buy in.
After getting the greenlight, we then proceeded to redesigning (or, really, designing) these flows - using our optimised path as the compass.
Talking & Testing
Over a couple of weeks we rapidly created and tested wireframes for that 'happy flow', with specific focus on the testing features for the updated report. The usability studies we conducted centred on owners reviewing the reports, onboarding, and completing tasks related to setting up a capital expenditure plan.
Unfortunately we were constrained by time, so we had to be comfortable making trade-offs on limiting iterations to onboarding and showing reporting.
Act 3: Putting it together
Visual Overhaul
One of the directives of a tone and style for the UI was to create a more clearer distinction between the existing Lannock brand, which contained similar visual tones of the Lannock brand.
A number of iterations later, we landed on a blend of reliable yet a someone "safe" style. We pushed for a more distinctive style, with a broader spectrum of vivid accentuated colours but ultimately had to pull it back in to accommodate the tastes.
Onboarding
We reworked and setup a number of new and improve flows to the onboarding and setup of a new building. We conceptualised this to be far more streamlined, with the intent that a property wouldn't be needed to update or reviewed very often.
Budget Review
A core screen and central to the strata-management experience was to the review dashboard. We felt that the original design, whilst at its heart was sound, it needed to be simplified where possible
The Report
The owner's report was a new feature that allowed the strata manager to share the proposal for how to fund a capital works project.
Conclusion
The redesign tackled a number of product issues that the original MVP didn't optimise. The nature of new products is that they're a work in process, constantly applying new features and fixes to continually create value for the customer and business.