Eradicating business issues through customer experience investigation
Low-quality images were affecting negatively the customer and stakeholder experience, and this issue was the pivot to deliver an app “buddy” for my client
Overview
A small real estate firm presented me with their problem: phone calls were dropping and they wanted to face this. In a brief talk, I could visualize the biz runners were concerned about the final user’s perception of their products’ pictures by saying “the client needs to know and feel that our products are pretty good when they see our listings.”
After hearing this, I understood they were not talking about the pictures themselves, instead, they were worried about the perception of their clients.
Disclaimer
As usual, I had to investigate and read between the lines to figure out what was the real problem and its impact. However, to do that I had access to the real estate office stakeholders and their data. In this way, I could talk to, listen to, and observe them interacting with one another, as also with customers.
To run this project I established three phases:
🔍 1 Research
- Observation Notes
- System Map
💡2 Ideation
- Hypothesis Generation
- The Concept
🎯3 Prototype
- Let’s test it!
- Bring me to life
Research
During the research phase I could visualize implicit things that were happening at the company:
It’s important to understand the aesthetics influence people’s judgment over the quality of a service or product (e.g. beautiful things are associated with the concept of good quality; ugly things have the opposite effect).
1 Low-quality image were creating conflict between realtors and creative people, impacting negatively the workspace by demotivating people and adding stressful interactions.
2 Low-quality pics required a new photo session, raising the efforts of realtors and homeowners, which the latter could be suspicious about the service quality of the firm.
3 Few good images on the listing tended to reduce the sensation of options from the customers’ perspective. As a buyer said once “ you have just four pictures?”
System Map
Hypothesis Generation
Based on data collected and the analysis of the environment, I had to think about possible solutions that could fix the problem, without increasing costs, team efforts, and evoking skepticism from stakeholders involved.
Obstacles
1. Could the office hire a professional photographer?
No. The company could not afford it.
2. Could realtors do an interior photography course?
Realtors were too focused on prospecting, getting proposals, negotiating, and closing contracts.
They did not want to use their precious time to spend on a “useless” course that doesn’t close contracts (Hey, this was their opinion, not mine).
3. Could the photo editor work side by side with realtors by taking the pictures during the prospection phase?
Not either. It is a small firm, and because of this the person who edited images also had more functions at the office. If this worker went outside, other office areas would be affected negatively.
The Concept
After looking at the whole situation and perceiving that low-quality images had negative side effects for the company, it was coming clear that we needed to terminate those pain points by targeting the source of all of them: the lack of indoor photography knowledge.
Then, I came up with the following question: What if we provide a kind of digital photo guide for realtors by showing only basic concepts and practical knowledge, adopting a newbie approach, on a budget?
This kind of app would be like a quick and simple visual guide that realtors could check all the time when they have doubts about how-to-take-a-good-interior-photo.
The product would be tailored based on real estate agents’ most frequent mistakes and would be divided into three sections: Quick Tips, Concepts of Photography, and Common Mistakes.
PhotoGuide Flow
Prototype
This is not a hi-fi version (as the company is based in Brazil, the content is written in Portuguese)
👍🏼Quick Tips — Flow
📸Concepts of Photography — Flow
💩Common Mistakes — Flow
🌟Bring me to life
Helping the firm save its budget was also a pillar to making this project available. It was suggested to build the app by using Bravo Studio, based on these four things:
- There is no need to code
- The company has control over data, even working with a third-party tool to manage the backend (Airtable)
- Stakeholders will be able to access the app through their smartphones as if they would use a standard application
- Such Airtable and Bravo Studio have a free version that allows the team to test the prototypes first, and then, after approval, launch the final version at Apple Store and Play Store
The implementation of this feature will be covered in another moment.
Thank you for reading until the end, and if you have any questions about the project, it will be a pleasure to answer them.
