Shareable is an investment platform designed to facilitate the fractional ownership of properties. More specifically, the platform makes it easy for multiple individuals to share the ownership of one property, lowering the barrier of entry for first-time property buyers and making the market more accessible to younger investors.
User Research
UX & UI Design
User Testing
Google Forms
Procreate
Illustrator
Figma
6 weeks
To holistically understand the justification of the Shareable product, it is important to first understand a more fundamental 'why'. The concept of leverage is the foundation which all real estate investments are built upon and is the core driver behind Shareable.
Leverage refers to the use of debt (borrowed funds) to amplify returns from an investment or project. Investors use leverage to multiply their buying power in the market. Companies use leverage to finance their assets—instead of issuing stock to raise capital, companies can use debt to invest in business operations in an attempt to increase the net shareholder value.
Leverage within the context of real estate: Property investors can use borrowed money to buy property and return a higher amount than that which they borrowed (thanks to the natural appreciation of the property market). Furthermore, if said investor treats the property as an “investment property” and rents it out to a tenant, the initial borrowed sum can be even further leveraged.
The data below is taken from various South African property and statistical organisations. When seen together these statistics paint a very clear picture; the price of mortgages (which I will be referring to as "bonds" for the remainder of this case study) are unaffordable for a large number of South Africans- particularly individuals under the age of 35 who are more likely to be classified as 'low income'.
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For the end users identified above (low income individuals under 35), the Fractional Ownership model shown below seems to be the most practical and feasible method for facilitating entry into the property market. The combination of this method being low risk, low effort and a source of passive income makes it a great fit.
To better understand how the Shareable product could use Fractional Ownership in a way that would best satisfy the end user, I conducted a small scale survey with a group of 10 low income individuals (all under the age of 35). The survey questions were aimed at helping identify what the most important features of the product should be and also how the product might be structured. Below are some of the key insights I gained from the research.
show research questions
There are currently a number of companies on the market aimed at fractionalising real estate in different ways. Below are four of the leading companies with a short description and a brief list of what I believe their product's are doing right and what they are doing wrong.
One of the recurring messages from the survey participants was the idea of ease-of-use and simplicity. Keeping this in mind, I ensured that the information architecture (IA) of the product was straight forward and uncomplicated. After the Login and Welcome pages, the product presents users with three core pages from which all of the primary and secondary features can be accessed. This simple architecture allows users to easily and quickly carry-out the most common tasks- checking their portfolio stats, interacting with friends, and finding new properties.
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After creating and refining the structure of the product I began turning some of the key pages into low-fidelity hand drawn wireframes. During this phase of designing I focused primarily on layout and visual hierarchy. After this, I refined the wireframes into mid-fidelity versions. This process was less of an ideation phase and more of a refinement phase, which involved me focussing more closely on proportion, spacing and contrast.
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I wanted Shareable's design system to reflect the product's sleek IA, and be as straight forward, clean and easy to interact with as possible. This resulted in me building a minimalistic yet bold visual system which utilises a modern, open-source, variable weight sans serif typeface with a simple yet striking colour palette.
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With a fleshed out design system, user flow diagram and wireframe in pocket, I began building version 1 of the Shareable prototype. My goal with the UI design was to make something that needed very little onboarding and that was intuitive for first-time users. The result was an elegant mobile application that makes the process of investing in property with your friends easy to set up and track.
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For the Shareable digital product to be made a reality; it would ultimately need to be the customer facing part of a Financial Services Provider. Creating and operating this business would not only require funding but also the implementation of extensive financial and legislative expertise. However, the customer facing mobile application, it's design, and it's information architecture could largely stay the same.
To view the full case study with user testing and the final prototype, view this page on desktop :)
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