Construction company - Embarking a connective ecosystem between homeowners and builders

Challenge 

Expectations from B2C experiences are permeating into B2B, which is becoming the new CX frontier. Builders FirstSource sought to create a platform that would connect customers and builder key stakeholders for a seamless digital experience when buying and building a home. ​

Key OPPORTUNITIES

  • Sizable impact for a NA homebuilder to develop a platform to acquire ~4,000 users and achieve $1B in revenues by 2026, with an H2 2022 release

  • Embarked on Blueprint and Prototyping phase as a critical first step in the application build process to define what the team will work against, with the ultimate goal to develop a commercialize version of the products by H2-2022

  • Supporting clients to shape their north-star product vision through rapid and iterative visualizations of features and happy paths

  • Bringing the users’ voice to the forefront of designing customer experiences through regular concept and prototype testing with homebuyers and homebuilders

  • Informing the initial prioritization of features which we then collaborated with tech to gain a deeper understanding around feasibility

Impact 

Created a rapid prototype in 4 weeks and started the Build phase where we coached their product teams during their sprint cadences and strategy outlooks. Our goal was to build and implement in 6 months.

DISCOVER: Understand the Current State

We were able to identify opportunities and pinpoints integration points with third-party applications based on user needs

  • Understand existing material: Review existing research outputs and hypotheses for each journey and feature to drive adoption

  • Designing north-star journey: Conduct several journey mapping working sessions to solidify future state and identify signature moments

  • Iterative Design Refinement: Several co-creation refinement sessions to design concepts and hi-fidelity prototypes and iteratively test with a user panel

  • Feature Prioritization: Review other digital products in the ecosystem to recommend an E2E architecture and experience

DEFINE: North Star Vision

  • Ideation workshop to generate concepts

    • 24 Participants across seven departments

    • 62 Initial concepts generated

    • X Journey maps

< INSERT WORKSHOP PHOTOS and JOURNEY MAPS >

CREATE: Prototype and Pilot MVP

We were able to develop initial concept sketches for the various journeys to help us understand and get feedback for further iterations.

< INSERT WIREFRAMES >

We co-created three distinct prototypes for homebuyers, homebuilders, and vendors.

  1. Home buyer experience: A platform to help homebuyers find the right community, select floorplans, collaborate with the homebuilder and track the progress throughout design and construction.

    • Independent Homebuyers are able to filter lots by community, lifestyle needs, price, amenities etc. 

    • “Wizard” functionality to support homebuyers who need more guidance and recommendations of communities

    • Ability to choose a builder plan and configure it with various elevations, options, and design selections

  2. Vendor experience- setting up the builder catalogue: Vendors have a guided experience setting up their master catalog which feeds to the whole house configurator and ultimately to the BOM for order placement

    • Builder selects all major materials used in home construction

    • Review all suppliers on the marketplace for a given product/ material

  3. Homebuilder collaboration experience: Homebuilders are empowered to facilitate collaboration across various stakeholders on design files for a more efficient pre-construction process

    • Comprehensive design schedule (Gantt chart) helps builders stay on track

    • Task creation with the ability to assign members/add members to collaborate

    • File Annotation and Issue Resolution enables stakeholders to collaborate on 2D and 3D files quickly to tracking edits and manage conflicts with a chatroom environment