Context:
Brick & Wonder Beta a private member community had successfully launched its market site collecting opportunites that were shared within the platform. New Trust Tool feature had recently been launched and the product team was driving evolution of next feature set inline with product vision.
Process:
Followed a user centered design process to investigate how Brick & Wonder members felt and interacted with the opportunities marketplace.
Discovery:
Conducted member surveys and interviews. Focussed interviews with members that had successfully connected with an opportunity through the marketplace. Strong community, lots of positive feedback with wanting more ways to interact.
Members working with and recommending other members was an obvious and big pipeline for opportunities. Member generated opportunities were already happening outside of the beta between members in the community, but these natural referrals were difficult to occur in the beta. Some of the reasoning;
- High risk and high stakes
- Low trust and accountability
- Referrals are hard to track, measure and value
- Sensitivity around some resources privacy concerns
Solutions:
Letting user research be the guide, brainstormed and designed multiple solutions and user-flows beginning with ways members could easily refer oportunities directly with another member.
Design question that grounded the user flows, "How do we unlock the potential of trust and opportunities within the community?"
Made iterations based on member advisor feedback to add the ability to recommend new professionals that weren't in the community. Revised user flows to include a recommend new members feature.
Opportunities were being uploaded to the beta by Brick & Wonder staff after validating with the member that initiated to confirm project details and its authenticity.
There was a lot of desire to open this up to the members to post opportunities directly in the market place, but with a lot of caution to the sensitivity of certain project details and awareness that some project opportunities needed to remain private within smaller circles of teams.
User flows were designed so members could post opportunities publicly or privately with transparency and confirmation along the steps to post. Project details were intentionally kept sparse and direct to keep posting simple and to kick off interest.
Redesigned the public facing website to cater more to the new client audience and market how Brick & Wonder connects with the top tier talent in real estate and design. Design efforts were to be more people centric. Focus on living and lifestyles and not just technical wonder.
Roundtable Series:
Held monthly on the first Thursday, the Roundtable Event series was aimed at the NYC design and real estate community, covering various professional topics in a relaxed and informative setting and was another great way for members to meet-up in person and connect with a network of design and real estate leaders, establish partnerships and build brand equity.
Designed the branding and promtional marketing of Brick & Wonder Roundtable series to be clean, playful and mindful that it was an extension of the beta product.
Photographed and recorded the audio of the series discussions. Worked with B&W community manager and created a digital package of designs and photos of the events sized for sharing across social media.
