Designing the First Client Portal for a Proptech Appraisal Firm

Bowery Valuation is a tech-enabled commercial real estate appraisal firm headquartered in New York. It writes reports in all 50 states for lenders such as Wells Fargo, Capital One and TD Bank.

Bowery's edge was its own software. In-house appraisers already used a powerful internal platform to collect data and find comparable sales. Clients, however, never saw any of it: they received a report and went elsewhere to do their own research.

Bowery had verified data its clients couldn't reach. They were piecing together research from Zillow, CoStar and other third-party tools instead.

• Build the company's first external-facing product , a new surface with new users, stakes and expectations
• Make dense financial and property data simple to search and understand
• Design for a wide range of users, including older and less tech-savvy investors
• Stay consistent with Bowery's MUI 5 design system so engineering could ship quickly
• Support the company's national expansion into new markets

Interviews with appraisers: most of Bowery's users were internal, so I ran interviews with head appraisers and junior appraisers at partnered offices across the U.S. to learn how they search, filter and assess properties day to day

• Internal tool as a starting point: used those interviews to decide which of the appraisers' patterns to bring over to clients, and which expert-only controls to leave out
• Client workflow: mapped how institutional clients researched properties across third-party tools, to find where one portal could save them the hunt
• Accessibility lens: set a bar for legibility and clarity for older, less tech-savvy investors
• Wireframes for alignment: used early wireframes to settle product direction with stakeholders before moving to high fidelity

Product designer on the portal from early concept to beta, working with product, engineering and research.

• Designed end-to-end UX flows for the client portal
• Built early wireframes to align stakeholders on direction
• Designed high-fidelity UI and interactions within the MUI 5 design system
• Partnered with PMs and engineers to ship beta features
• Created visual assets for internal tools and new-market integrations

At Bowery, for our whole product suite of tools, we used MUI 5.0 to help create our products. For this project, we wanted to make sure our design system is consistent so that our designers and engineers can have a source of truth. You can check out MUI 5 documentation here

Screens

For the business: Turned Bowery's internal data advantage into a client-facing product, and supported national expansion

• For clients: one place to research verified valuation data, instead of juggling Zillow, CoStar and email
• For teams: closer collaboration between appraisers, product and engineering, plus a front-end foundation to build on
• What I learned: designing an internal tool's first external version is mostly about subtraction. Experts want every control; clients want the answer fast.