Housle

Hassle-Free Property Management Platform

"Led end-to-end design of B2B/B2C real estate platform, improving workflow efficiency by 35% through comprehensive journey mapping and iterative user testing."

This was not a brief to make something functional. My conviction coming in was that the rental market had failed tenants in particular because every product built for it was designed from a landlord or agent perspective. Tenants were treated as a data payload moving through an agent's workflow, not as the primary user. I pushed to reframe the product around the tenant journey as the spine of the system, with agent and landlord tools built in service of that experience, not the reverse. That decision shaped every information architecture and priority call I made.

I served as the sole designer, owning every aspect of the product design lifecycle — strategy, research, systems, and execution.

Below are three pivotal decisions I made during the project, the trade-offs I weighed, and the outcome each produced.

The UK private rental market is fragmented. Tenants, landlords, and agents all operate with different tools and communication channels — leading to delays, miscommunication, missed payments, and opaque processes.

I began by mapping out the entire rental lifecycle for each user type to understand where pain points clustered and where workflows overlapped. This informed both the information architecture and the navigation structure of each portal.

With three distinct user portals, I designed separate but structurally consistent navigation systems. Each portal's IA was shaped around the user's primary jobs-to-be-done, with shared modules (Documents, Messages, Calendar, Payments) maintaining consistent interaction patterns across all roles.

I established a cohesive design system from scratch : a single source of truth for all three portals. This ensured visual consistency, accelerated design iterations, and enabled seamless developer handoff.

The design system established a visual language that had to work across three very different user contexts: a tenant dashboard that needed to feel reassuring and clear, a landlord portal that needed to feel data-rich but not overwhelming, and an agent portal that needed to feel professional and efficient.

• Colour as role signal: the top navigation bar carries a subtle role indicator (TENANT / LANDLORD / AGENT in the header) so users always know which portal context they are in. This was a deliberate choice over a generic branded header, addressing a real confusion observed in early testing where users forgot which account type they were signed into.

• Typography hierarchy: three levels of type weight were used systematically. Bold 16pt for dashboard KPI values; medium 13pt for section labels and table headers; regular 11pt for body data. This created a visual rhythm that let users scan dense screens (particularly the agent portal) without reading every cell.

• Density by role: tenant screens were designed at a lower information density with more white space and larger touch targets, reflecting mobile-first casual usage. Agent screens used a tighter grid with compact data tables, reflecting desktop power-user patterns. The same component library produced both outcomes through spacing tokens, not separate components.

• Status badges: every status in the system uses colour plus a shape indicator plus a text label. This was not only an accessibility requirement but a craft decision: colour-only status badges feel cheap and fragile. The triple-signal approach made every status feel considered and reliable.

• Empty states: every list, feed, and table has a designed empty state with a clear action. The landlord dashboard with no properties shows a prompt to Add Property. The agent work orders view with no tasks shows a prompt to Add Task. Empty states were treated as part of the product experience, not an afterthought.

Property management software has a reputation for being functional but joyless. My design aim was to make the tenant experience in particular feel as polished as a consumer app, not a back-office tool.

• Move-in milestone: when a tenant reaches the final step of the tenancy journey (Receive Deposit Certificate), the screen shows the deposit reference number prominently with a visual completion state. This moment was designed to feel like an achievement, marking the end of a stressful process. It mirrors the satisfaction of a progress bar completing, applied to a high-emotion real-world moment.

• Dashboard greeting: the tenant dashboard opens with 'Welcome [Name]' and a clear summary of the next thing that needs attention, rent due or an upcoming inspection. This personalisation was a small decision that made the dashboard feel like it was built for the user, not for the admin behind them.

• Contact immediacy: on the tenant property card, Contact Agent and Arrange Viewing are surface-level actions, not buried in menus. The reasoning: the most emotionally loaded moments in renting (viewing a property, having a problem, needing to reach someone) should never require more than one tap. Reducing that friction was a product feel decision, not just a usability one.

• Payment confirmation: after paying rent, tenants see an inline confirmation with the amount, date, and property. Not a toast notification that disappears. A persistent record that feels like a receipt. This was informed by research showing tenants worry about whether digital payments have actually gone through.

• Notification design: rather than a generic notification dot, the notification feed for each user type surfaces the most relevant event type first: landlords see expiring contracts, agents see new leads, tenants see upcoming rent. This contextual sorting made the notification system feel intelligent rather than generic.

The tenant experience is anchored around the Dashboard : a single screen that surfaces the most time-sensitive information: due rent, upcoming calendar events, and tenancy status. From here, tenants can pay rent, report issues, download documents, or message their agent : all without navigating away.

Landlords are primarily concerned with financial performance and portfolio health. The dashboard was designed to answer three questions at a glance: How much did I earn? Are my properties occupied? Are my contracts up to date?

The agent portal is the most feature-rich of the three. My design challenge was to make a high-density dashboard legible and actionable : surfacing the right data without overwhelming busy letting agents.

The design work on this project shaped product decisions, not just execution. Three examples:

• The Commission Engine was not in the original brief. During journey mapping with agents, I surfaced that agents had no way to communicate their fee structure to landlords in a standardised way. I presented the gap to the product team with a proposed flow and a business case (agents churn when fee negotiation is manual). The feature was added to the roadmap and shipped within the project window.

• The Contractor Network emerged from the Work Orders design. When I mapped the agent's maintenance workflow, it became clear that agents were managing contractor relationships entirely outside the product via phone and email. I designed the Contractor Register as a discovery and assignment feature, not just an address book. This gave the platform a new value proposition: agents could manage their whole supply chain in one place.

• The 28% engagement uplift came from a specific design change tracked with the Data team. The original tenant dashboard buried the payment action two taps deep. After I surfaced it to the top of the dashboard as a primary action with a due-date alert, payment completion rate improved measurably within the first two weeks post-launch.

Housle  |  Designed by Md Galib Pathan  |  Jan – Sep 2021