Empower sellers with real-time auction tool
Designed Bid Interact Mobile App to empower the sellers monitor auctions in real-time, receive instant notifications, make reserve changes instantly, and accept live bids – all while displaying the bidding history and relevant value data in one convenient place for informed decisioning.
Company: Auction.com
Auction.com is nation’s leading online marketplace for the disposition of distressed residential properties, providing sellers and buyers with innovative ways to transact distressed assets.
work done
Conceptual Design, Visual Design, and Interaction Design
Sketches, wireframes, wire-flows, hi fi prototypes, animated micro-interactions, Invision clickable prototype
UX Research
User & Stakeholder Interviews, User Persona, Storyboard, Use Cases
Design System, System Style Guide, and Design Toolkit
Collaborated with cross-functional team to get data and insights
Strategy Vision, Ideation, Iteration Present to stakeholders to get buy in
overview
I executed User experience of a new real-time decision tool, from conception to launch, coordinating all UX related efforts and leading all research and design. I collaborated with stakeholders, various cross-functional teams, and designers while placing the user at the core of the product design lifecycle.
Success Metrics
Online REO auction properties sold so far in Q1 2020 on the Auction.com platform have seen an average of 4.2 unique bidders per property and an average of 15.5 bids per property – with both of those metrics up from the previous quarter and a year ago.
platform
Mobile App
Project timeframe
3 Months
My Role
Senior Product Designer
Tools Used
Sketch, Invision, Zeplin, Principle, & Figma
PROBLEM OVERVIEW
unable to participate in real time live bid to take informed decision to sell assets quickly
When assets are in auctions, these auctions quickly determine the market price and demand of an asset early in the asset lifecycle. Sometimes the market cannot meet the seller at a price that fits the seller’s current expectations. In a live bid when the seller receives a bid, this seller is informed via email without any other system alert or notification. The seller can sometimes miss the email and thus miss an opportunity to sell their asset in a live bid which decreases their sales rate.
DESIGN SOLUTION
Empower the user/seller to get notified instantly so they can sell assets quickly in real time bid and increase their sales rate.
To better serve the sellers to be empowered by receiving instant notifications and all the data information on assets to either reprice their assets (to get best price) or to take action on a real time bid (Accept, Counter, or Decline) which will both increase the chance to sell assets quickly in real-time bidding, Auction.com introduced Bid Interact in Mobile App.
Project goal
Design Bid Interact mobile app where sellers/servicer clients are empowered by monitoring Live REO Auctions in real-time, get notified on the go, make reserve changes instantly, and accept live bids – all while displaying the bidding history and relevant value data in one convenient place for informed decisioning to sell assets with best price.
aligning user goals with business Goals
business goals
Increase sales rate
Increase Seller Accepts and Repricing (execution)
Increase Seller Satisfaction
user (Seller) goals
Increase Sales rate.
Get the best price for the assets (Increase total revenue)
Timing (selling assets as quickly as possible).
cross-functional team collaboration
stakeholders
I collaborated with cross-functional teams like Client Management, Data Analytics, Buyer Service, Marketing, Google Analytics, Operations, and Legal to get data insights to understand how the user and business are aligned.
seller team - my team
I collaborated with Seller Team for where I was the lead Product Designer. The team included Product Manager, Front End Engineers, Back End Engineers, and QA.
the design process
Our team followed the Agile Scrum format with daily scrum meetings for this project.
Below is my design process that I followed:
Empathize and Discover: I teamed with two project managers and stakeholders to strategize accurate and deep intuitive understanding of the user to address user’s pain points, information needs and behavior.
Interview Stakeholders and Users: I interviewed users to understand weak links in the existing Desktop app and what new features they would to have to get a better experience. I interviewed upper stakeholders to gather and understand business requirements and constraints. I met with Client Management and Portfolio Management leads to gain insight into Sell-side Client behavior and expectation. Field studies, Contextual Inquiry in agile format, were conducted where I observed the users, asked questions and listened to them.
Strategy, Vision, Ideation and Iteration: I created sketches and prototypes with “fail fast and iterate quickly” to ideate, iterate and share the vision with the PMs and stakeholders/sponsors to maintain consistency in our approach with the storyboard flow. This helped defining the vision and finalize decision on the features and design specs.
Testing and Validation : I tested and validated the designs early and often during various stages of the design process.
User Interviews
I interviewed our users who are asset managers from the banks which represent Auction’s sellers. The feedback gave useful insight as to what data they would like to see during an auction and their pain points with the current system.
Findings:
The most important indicators for seller success?
Sales rate.
% of Winning Bid to Reserve (Execution Rate).
Timing (selling my assets as quickly as possible).
Total revenue.
Current Pain points:
No Mobile App to participate in live real-time Bidding. Only Web/desktop access.
Lack of notifications for real-time bidding -currently emails are the only way to receive notifications.
Need email/messaging to correspond with Auction.com and buyers in same application for faster decision on bids.
storyboard
I created a storyboard to help communicate the story of how Bid Interact tool will help our sellers in moving their assets faster.
Persona
I created user persona to help define the target user along with its goals and pain points. These pain points are to be addressed in the design solution.
Findings:
Pain Points & Frustrations:
No Notifications for Real Time auction.
Lack of context to decision assets.
Assets are sitting in auction runs for too long.
DESIGN SYSTEM and DESIGN STYLE GUIDE
I created a brand new style guide for Seller Mobile App and added to Auction.com’s Design System. I also collaborated with Engineers to create Design Toolkit, Storybook (React, React Native), React Semantic UI to maintain Design consistency and Branding for Auction.com.
DESIGN TOOLKIT
Initial Conceptual Sketches
After I gathered information from the Stakeholders and we finalized use cases, I began conceptualizing my designs with sketches.
Wireframes
Asset List
property details
Asset at a Glance
notes
Asset Details- Auction Activity
low fidelity initial wire flow
Based on the information from research, conceptualized sketches, I began wireframing and put context to the user flow in each screen.
design iterations- hi fidelity prototypes
Below are the design Iterations when the user clicks on Asset and Asset Details opens up. I have leveraged the existing design of Bid Interact here to see if I can accommodate important features of “Offer Interact” within the parameters of Bid Interact.
Design Iterations
More Design Iterations
DESKTOP APP - MOBILE APP CONSISTENCY- design constraints
Based on user and stakeholder interviews, it was important to preserve the functionality of the desktop app and maintain consistency of the same in the Mobile App.
Comparing Filters on Desktop and Mobile
Comparing “Properties Detail Tab
Comparing Auction Activity Page
micro interactions
final design
The final design (from left to right) consists of the flow from:
Selecting the Asset from the asset list
It takes the user straight to Asset details,
“Action tabs” to learn more about the auction history, asset bed and bath and “Notes” from another asset manager
Take action to “Sell” Counter” “Reject” “Change Reserve Price”
All within a single click !
invision clickable prototype
ANIMATED DESIGN
The Animated prototype shows how the user can access all the information he needs to take a decision on a bid in real time to get the best price at the right time thus moving assets quickly which is his ultimate goal!
usability testing
We gathered qualitative data based on usability testing. I conducted User Testing for this project at every step of the iterative process in collaboration with Buy-Side designer to achieve the best results for the product. Based on the usability tests, I improved the designs to meet the expectations of the user. Some tests were remote and some were on premises.
final design sign off- Design UAT
Despite creating design iterations at early-stage task flows, there were numerous design change debates due to engineering and launch date constraints. I collaborated with 2 PMs, 3 Front-End Engineers, 2 Back-End Engineers, and 2 QA Engineers to execute Design User Acceptance Testing (UAT) on each feature to make sure we delivered on fixed launch date with fixed scope.
Design Challenges
Due to engineering availability constraints we had to move some features to be built in phase 2. Due to multiple stakeholders represented this project, there were too many decisions on design features for In App email vs instant messaging. Based on user feedback and time-budget and engineering constraints we took the path of In app email which will be developed in phase 2.
impact - DESIGN SOLUTION
did this project meet user-business goals?
Yes, this project met both the business and the user/seller goals. By designing and introducing Bid Interact Mobile App, Auction.com is empowering the Seller to Sell their assets with ease by providing them with right information to adjust the price and to take an informed decision on a real-time bid to sell their assets as quickly as possible with the right price hence, increasing sales rate and maximizing revenue which is also the business goal.
Next Steps…
Next steps will include
Designing the In App Mail so that the Seller can correspond with Auction.com and their buyers all in one place for ease of use.
Based on Seller feedback and test we will refine the features in this project.
Success metrics & In the news
According to Auction.com VP, Market Economic Daren Blomquist, in 34 of 81 metro areas analyzed in the Auction.com data, 100% of online REO auction properties sold in Q1 2020 attracted multiple bidders, including Houston, Washington, D.C., Columbus, Ohio, Orlando, and Virginia Beach.
Blomquist says that "even in somewhat less competitive markets like Duluth, Kalamazoo, and Scranton, at least 60 percent of all online REO auction properties sold so far in Q1 2020 attracted multiple, competing bidders."
Online REO auction properties sold so far in Q1 2020 on the Auction.com platform have seen an average of 4.2 unique bidders per property and an average of 15.5 bids per property – with both of those metrics up from the previous quarter and a year ago.