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TL:DR

I was tasked with creating a prototype multimodal AI assistant for a Canadian realtor (estate agent to UK friends). I conducted interviews with users and researched competition, held workshops to ideate concepts to resolve user needs, and then iterated on the designs until they shined (and even added sound design). I was awarded an ‘Advanced Conversation Designer’ certificate from VTG for this project 🏆

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Contents:

Video Presentation of Properly Here Project (open toggle to view)

My Design Process In Full

6 weeks of research, design and refinement went into my Properly Here capstone project. Here you can see each stage of the design process in detail.

Research

Who is the brand?

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In their words:

Properly.ca is a prop-tech company that is disrupting the real estate industry. They aim to eliminate the headaches of double mortgages, temporary housing, or settling for something less than perfect. Their direct-to-consumer model and financial products allow users to sell properties instantly or buy properties before needing to sell their own homes. Many customers have a lot of difficulties understanding this new real estate model, which leads to hesitancy or abandonment of sales processes, especially without the personal touch of a real, human real estate agent.

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In my words:

• They’re based in Toronto and plan to expand to all of Canada
• They provide a ‘full service’ for buying and selling property
• They’re tech-oriented
• Canadians use the term ‘real estate’ (I know that linguistic terms might differ from what I’m used to) </aside>

Initial Thoughts

I wondered if it was going to be problematic to focus my capstone project on the Toronto real estate market. I’m in Central Europe! I’ve lived in Scotland and Czechia and know that the property markets in both countries are drastically different – in terms of law, business practices, mortgages, and other details – so I expected that the Toronto real estate market would also be different from what I know.

However, I decided that it was worth a try – all research could be conducted online (it was August 2021 and Toronto was under strict COVID lockdown like most of the world), plus the course instructors lived in Toronto so could give feedback if I made wrong assumptions…

Competition

I created the table below to analyse the competition.

On the left you can see the services that Properly.ca offer. The other columns show how competitors match Properly.ca in their offering.

As you can see, New Era Real Estate is the closest competitor: