Rearchitecting 30 Year Old Technology
About:
Keller Williams Realty International offers Command, a cloud-based SaaS platform for over 200,000 real estate professionals to run their business.
Challenge:
Keller Williams began deprecating 30 year old legacy systems in order to modernize and build proprietary technology.
Previously, users had to navigate several different tools in order to complete simple tasks.
My Role:
Lead product designer over 3 platforms with 4 designers on my team.
Initiative I: Deprecate the Old
Approach:
Keller Williams’ top priority as a business was to deprecate old tools under an aggressive timeline. We were given 2 years to deprecate 6 legacy applications and a host of services. We needed to replace lost functionality. I spearheaded the strategic integration of legacy and new features, ensuring alignment with both user needs and business objectives.
Database consolidation diagram
Key Steps:
Visualize the current site map and outline an iterative approach for building new features inside Keller Cloud
Experiment with a new side navigation structure; scalability was a key consideration
Create user scenarios and diagrams to capture business requirements
Site map with proposal
A snippet of an audit of existing tools workflows
Results:
Through collaboration with Product and Engineering, we determined that the Command for Market Centers platform would need a new space or, Applet as we call it internally, where users could govern their Market Center. In addition, we needed to create a 2 additional platforms inside the Keller Cloud.
Initiative II: Validating Our Approach
We had the hypothesis that we needed this central hub for Command for Market Center users but we needed to validate it. We set out to ask a lot of questions to internal and external users. Through a multitude of user research methodologies, we validated our approach and learned how painful their current workflows were.
Card sorting results from Optimal Workshop
Focus group with SMEs
“Hopping between different systems takes up a painful amount of my day.”
What we learned
Users faced heavy cognitive load because they had to access multiple programs to complete tasks. This led to excessive overhead in training and documentation
Users’ groupings of objects and tasks were straightforward
The bar is low for improving efficiency and way-finding
The current information architecture caused confusion and unexpected outcomes
Initiative III: A Modern Implementation
With our hypothesis validated, we started to build the new Applet called, Administration. This would be that centralized tool for Market Center users to complete daily tasks.
Key Steps:
In converging new and old features I leveraged the new KWx design system for speed and consistency
Implemented changes based on effort/impact matrix along with the low-hanging fruit insights from user research
Introduced a new navigation pattern that allowed scalability; we didn’t know how many features would be built in Administration.
Before and After
The new design showcases the changes to existing features using the new KWx design system
The entire Team Tool experience was rebuilt inside of Administration Applet
Adding a new Agent to a Keller Williams Market Center
Third party integration tool with AccountEdge
The Administration Applet went live in Q1 2023 with 3 pages of features. Today the Applet has 15 pages and counting!
Current offerings in the Administration applet
Impact
“As a frequent user of all these features, I enjoy the simplicity and functionality of this [Administration] applet.”
“Today was my 140th time closing the month! I have to say since transitioning from WinMORE to Command this month, it was by far the easiest one yet.”
Positive sentiment collected from users during live training sessions
“It will help our MCs [franchises] save up to $600,000 per year”
Above is just a snapshot of my process. If you’d like a closer look, please get in touch!