Quick feasibility analysis for multifamily construction

The feasibility study is a crucial part of real estate development projects. It helps building developers measure Return On Investment and make the right investment decisions for new projects. But it often involves many challenges, variations, and constraints that make the whole process too lengthy, costly, and inefficient.

As the sole product designer at Zebel, I designed a simple analytics tool that minimizes design development time and optimizes process to reduce cost. All, powered by historical projects and competitive market data.

how it started

a shift towards digitization

Today, the construction industry is reshaping and entering the digital age with unprecedented speed. There is enormous potential for increasing efficiency and quality in different stages of building development projects.

Now, many Startups are leveraging these market opportunities to fill newly created gaps. Zebel, a team of construction and software development professionals, was born out of the need for speed in the early stages of real estate development project lifecycle, feasibility study and conceptual design.
the challenge

complexity to comfort of use

The most important part of feasibility study is construction cost estimates. The accuracy and reliability of it highly depends on the resources used to generate cost estimates. Zebel believes that for a real estate development company, the most reliable resource is its historical project database.
Real data helps identify real-time factors that impact on profitability of a project and creates more accurate actionable solutions based upon them.        

The goal for the project was to create an all-in-one tool that enables developers to leverage their historical project data and monitor market trends.

design goal
The challenge here is although Tech savviness is spreading among younger generations, resistance to change has been always dominant in the construction industry. As a result, creating a simple and easy to understand and use platform that would create a trustworthy atmosphere was of paramount importance.

my process

the problem

traditional feasibility study

At the outset of the project, It was essential to understand how development companies conduct a feasibility study. The Traditional approach involves a grueling trial-and-error loop between the architect, contractor, and developer to find the most efficient design for the highest possible ROI.
traditional method of feasibility study

The traditional approach is usually inaccurate due to lots of pre-assumptions and limited real resources.

This method has several disadvantages:

• It's usually inaccurate due to lots of pre-assumptions and limited real resources.
• It takes so much time & effort,
• It is very costly.

Another part of the feasibility study is monitoring the market and comparing construction costs with other competitors. Conventional methods were mostly through contacting peers and exchanging information in different venues and business events.
traditional method of market study

Before, you had to know a lot of people in the industry to do a reliable market research.

This old-fashion method was inconsistent and unreliable because:

• It highly depended on the number of people they know in the market, and
• It usually took a long time to gather enough information to get reasonable insights.
audit

what is already there

The next step of my research was to evaluate what other companies in the market offers. The competitive analysis was to

• Evaluate competitors overall product design,
• Discover all features and functionalities within their product, and
• Identify the gaps and opportunities for Zebel

competitor a - direct

• Old Interface design,
• Poor and confusing information Architecture,
• No cost Estimate functionality.

competitor b - direct

• More like a form page with lots of form fields to fill,
• Too much text and no visuals,
• Just an estimating tool,
• It uses Regression-based estimating tool with no transparency of how it functions.

competitor c - indirect

• modern look with attention to the latest design patterns aka progressive disclosure, different types of form fields, master detail list, etc.
• doesn’t focus on the construction cost estimate. It is more focused on the design aspects.
In order to excel in the competitive marketplace, Zebel has to offer:

• A modern UI that’s easy to navigate and interact,
• Library of historical project data, comparison, and cost estimate functionality all in one cohesive platform,
• Transparency in exchanging knowledge on its analytics,
• A comprehensive real-time market analysis for monitoring market trends which will be Zebel's value proposition.
the users

High Value Proposition, Poor UX/UI

By offering their initial basic software, Zebel tested and validated their idea's accuracy in over three years with more than 150 cost estimates for large real estate development firms. They were successful in acquiring clients with their basic software which was a testament to their high value proposition.

So, I did a series of interviews with the CEO and existing clients to understand if the product meets their needs and fulfills its intended use.
initial product design

pain points

• Basic and old-fashioned interface
• Icons with no labels
• Hard to learn what it does
• Inefficient navigation system
• Long and exhausting user journeys
The result was promising! Market analysis by real data was the highlight of all features for the users. They loved the fact that they could easily access their historical project, compare them, and evaluate multiple design scenarios and find the optimal solution in the matter of minutes.

But, they had a hard time navigating through different pages, and easily got lost trying to go back to where they started.

How might we help developers to navigate throughout the platform with a minimum amount of effort or frustration?

ideation

working backwards

To start my ideation process, I reversed the polarity of traditional feasibility analysis. I wanted to see what would be considered as a quick, efficient, and accurate feasibility and market study in the construction industry.
scenario one
A developer is evaluating whether they should purchase land for development, they need to do a quick feasibility analysis and measure the return on investment of potential development.
They use Zebel to run quick feasibility analyses on new development projects. It includes entering their assumptions on the project design and expected revenues to generate a construction cost estimate as part of a pro forma analysis, which calculates the return on investment.
If it’s too low, they can modify their design assumptions and try different design options to find the one that makes the project financially viable.
scenario two
Developers need to constantly monitor the market and compare their costs with other companies.
Zebel will provide developers with the aggregated and anonymized data of its customers back to its customers. Then, all customers can benchmark their construction costs with all of their competitors in a much more comprehensive and data-driven way versus limited anecdotal information exchange with only the people they know.
scenario three
A developer will be able to leverage their own historical project data and unlock all the institutional knowledge buried in it to make more informed decisions about future projects.
Having a cohesive, organized, and complete library of historical data will also enables them to compare different data of multiple projects side by side.
Next, I defined my design framework by breaking these ideal scenarios into manifestations of elements, data, functions, actions, and mechanism.

Quick and Accurate Feasibility Study

ideal user flow to do cost estimate:
Lo-fi wireframe - estimate page

actions

• Filling the forms
• Chart interactions
• Export Estimate and pro forma

CHALLENGE AND POTENTIAL PAIN POINTS

• Long and redundant form fields
• A lot of back and forth between changing assumptions and final estimate

elements

• Form Fields
• Data Charts
• Project assumptions

POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS AS UI PATTERNS

• Using different types of form field to make the form filling process more engaging
• Progressive disclosure to reduce the effect of the long process of filling the forms
• Side form sheets for enabling users to open and close when needed without leaving the page hence having control over the back and forth process of estimate
Form sheets in estimate page

Monitoring real time market trends

This can easily translate into data visualizations that compare real time data from the competitors with the company’s historical project data.
Lo-fi wireframe - dashboard page

actions

Interactions with charts

CHALLENGE AND POTENTIAL PAIN POINTS

• Unclear charts with no context
• Clutter of unnecessary data

elements

Interactive data charts

POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS AS UI PATTERNS

Visualizing the data to tell stories and give information that can be used to drive better decision making.
evolution of data charts

side by side comparison

Feature comparison tables here are not going to be helpful only in their primary function. The ideal comparison features will help in decision- making and add meaning to an otherwise too technical spec sheet.
Lo-fi wireframe - compare page

actions

• Filling forms
• Changing inputs

CHALLENGE AND POTENTIAL PAIN POINTS

• Long forms
• When the number of comparisons increase, the page might look overly crowded and hard to read.

elements

• Form fields
• Projects design/cost info
• Charts

POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS AS UI PATTERNS

• Using Progressive disclosure design to diminish the effect of long forms
• Using proper colorings and font families to help differentiate sections.
side by side Comparison with outliers highlighted

Cohesive library of historical project data

To leverage the historical project database, Zebel needs to have a library of all their historical projects.
Lo-fi wireframe - projects page

actions

• Choosing a project
• Review project data

CHALLENGE AND POTENTIAL PAIN POINTS

Too many click to browse/view/edit or switch between projects.

elements

• List of projects
• List of sub-projects
• Projects details

POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS AS UI PATTERNS

• Using a side-by-side Master-Detail Design pattern to avoid confusion and add more control
• using Expansion Panels to create freedom of access when page seems cluttered and data intensive.
projects page

introducing zebel platform

In an age where data is the most valuable resource in the world, Zebel empowers real estate development companies by leveraging their historical projects and monitoring real market data to save time, energy, and cost during the early stages of a development project.
Access to your historical project data in one place
PROJECTS PAGE - Zebel enables the developers to leverage their own historical project data and unlock all the institutional knowledge buried in it to make more informed decisions about future projects.
Compare multiple project costs side by side
COMPARE PAGE - Developers can find differences and similarities in design and construction cost to find more efficient solutions for new projects.
Monitor market trends and benchmark historical projects against competitors
DASHBOARD/MARKET ANALYSIS PAGE - Zebel aggregates data related to all of their customers, anonymizes them, and extracts insights and patterns that could help companies locate themselves in the competitive landscape and make informed investment decisions.
Create maximum value during early stages of project
ESTIMATE PAGE - Zebel streamlines the feasibility study for developers by eliminating traditional methods of conceptual design and cost estimate and replacing them by powerful analytical systems that use real data.
before build

Positive outcome and next steps

the next step was final usability testing and getting feedback and insights from potential clients followed by rounds of final refinements.
estimate page
Zebel had their former clients renew their subscription and acquired more new clients. This was a great testament to their vision and the new design. The clients seem to be happy with the clean UI and clear UX.
... The platform allows us to customize cost categories and synthesize broad and complex information immediately, saving our team days or even weeks of time. As early adopters, we are immensely pleased with Zebel’s level of analysis and its simplicity.
Zebel is going to launch in April 2021. The MVP is complete but as the product goes into the hands of real users, there will be more real time feedback and insights that’ll drive the direction of iterations towards a simpler, easier to use, every day tool for all developers.
... Afarin came up with a beautiful, intuitive, and easy to use design for our complex analytical software. Our customers love the new UI and we're super happy with the end result. She created a great cohesion between our website and product that clearly reflects our branding. Afarin approaches her work in a very methodical and thoughtful way, which pays great dividends in the end result.

let's work together

If you are doing a similar project, planning to develop a new idea, or looking to add to your product design team, I can help!
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