Real estate professionals drop software that adds friction to a deal or a showing. If your product feels like a tech tool instead of a business tool, adoption stalls no matter how strong the feature set is. Winston Francois designs PropTech products that fit how agents, brokers, and property managers actually work, so people use them by choice, not mandate.
The Problem
Your product was built around technical capability, not user workflow
Most PropTech products get designed around what the stack can do, not how real estate professionals think. Agents think in deals and relationships, not data fields. Property managers think in buildings and tenants, not modules and dashboards. When the product does not match that mental model, every rollout needs training and enforcement to get anyone to open it.
Roadmap decisions are made without direct user research
Features shipped on internal assumptions create gaps that frustrate daily users and functionality nobody asked for. Real estate professionals have needs shaped by their local market, their role, and the other tools already in their stack. Without regular research with actual users, the roadmap is a stack of guesses, and each guess is a sprint that could have been validated for the cost of five interviews.
The interface degrades as features accumulate
As a PropTech product matures, navigation gets deeper and screens get denser with every release. Without active design governance, each new feature adds friction for the next new user. Eventually the product that once felt simple has the exact complaint you were pitching against when you went after the incumbent.
How We Help
Winston Francois runs product design and research for PropTech companies that want a product real estate professionals choose to keep using. We bring the design discipline and research rigor that product teams rarely have in-house at this stage.
We start with research, not mockups. User interviews, contextual inquiries, and usability sessions with your actual users, wherever they work, watching them move between your product and the rest of their stack. That context – what they do before and after the moments they spend in your software – is what grounds every design decision in observed behavior instead of assumption.
From that research we build user models and journey maps your whole team can reference, not slide-deck artifacts. Product, engineering, and [marketing](/services/marketing/) use the same model of who the user is and what they care about, which gives every roadmap debate a shared frame instead of a guess.
Design follows research directly. We build interfaces around deals, properties, contacts, and timelines – the categories real estate professionals already think in – rather than around backend system concepts. Key flows get prototyped and tested with users before a line of production code gets written, so engineering time goes into designs that are already validated. Our [creative](/services/creative/) team carries that interaction work through to final visual execution.
For products already in market, we run a design audit that maps the highest-friction points in the current experience and ranks redesign work by impact on adoption and retention. Not every screen needs a rebuild – we point limited design hours at the handful of moments that actually move the numbers.
We also build a design system that scales with the product: component libraries, interaction patterns, and guidelines that let engineering ship new features that feel native to the product without a designer on every ticket.
All of it ties back to [growth strategy](/services/strategy/) and [measurement](/services/measurement/). Design changes move activation, feature adoption, retention, and NPS, and we instrument those metrics so you can see the return on design spend and decide where to invest next.
What we deliver
- User research program – interview protocols, recruitment of real estate professionals, research execution, and an insights report
- User models and journey maps – segment-specific models built for your PropTech user base
- Product design – wireframes, prototypes, and high-fidelity designs for priority flows and features
- Design audit and prioritization – friction analysis of the current product with a ranked improvement roadmap
- Design system – component library, interaction patterns, and guidelines for scalable product development
Real estate professionals do not want to learn new software. They want software that already understands how they work.
Our Methodology
We run product design and research as 90-day sprints on a research-design-validate cycle. Month one is research: user interviews, usability testing of the current product, and a review of the competitive experience. You get an insights report that lays out what users need, what frustrates them, and where the real opportunities sit.
Month two is design and prototyping. We take the top-priority opportunities from the research and design solutions against them. Every prototype goes through at least one round of user testing before we call it ready for engineering – that catches problems while they are still cheap to fix in Figma instead of expensive to fix in code.
Month three is refinement and handoff. Final designs clear an engineering feasibility review, the design system gets documented, and we train your team on the research insights and the system itself. Each sprint closes with a specific recommendation for the next cycle of research and design work, not a generic report.
How We Work
In the first 30 days we run 12 to 20 user interviews and usability sessions, analyze the findings, and present a research insights report to your product leadership, alongside a heuristic review of the current product. Your team sits in on synthesis sessions where we prioritize opportunities together, not just receive a deck.
Days 30 to 60 are design: wireframes, prototypes, and user flow diagrams move through iterative reviews with your team. We test prototypes with users mid-phase and adjust from that feedback, and your engineers sit in design reviews to confirm feasibility before anything is finalized.
Days 60 to 90 deliver production-ready designs, the design system components, and full documentation. The final sprint review includes a recommended research and design roadmap for the next two quarters. From there we can continue as an embedded design partner or hand off to your internal team.
Your engagement team is a lead product designer, a user researcher, and a design system specialist, scaled up or down based on scope and how many user segments we are researching at once.
- Higher product adoption through user-centered design
- Faster onboarding and reduced time to first value
- Improved user satisfaction and NPS scores
- A design system that holds quality as the product grows
If your real estate / proptech company needs product design & research leadership, we should talk.
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Let us take a custom approach to your growth goals by assembling and leading the best-in-class marketing team to support your next stage.
Frequently asked questions
How much does product design and research cost for a PropTech company?
Engagements are scoped on the complexity of your product, the number of user segments, and whether you need a full design system build or focused work on specific flows. We price as fixed-fee sprints so the total investment is known upfront. Most PropTech companies start with one 90-day sprint and extend based on results and roadmap needs.
How long before we see the impact of product design changes?
Changes to onboarding and core workflows show up in activation and engagement metrics within 30 to 60 days of shipping. Design system and information architecture changes take longer to roll out but compound over 2 to 3 quarters. We instrument the specific metrics each change targets so the before-and-after is visible, not assumed.
How does your design team work with our engineering team?
Directly and throughout the process. Engineers sit in design reviews, flag feasibility issues early, and help us understand real constraints before we design around them. We hand off designs with detailed specs and component documentation, and the design system we build maps to your front-end framework instead of sitting apart from it.
What makes Winston Francois different from a typical product design agency?
We lead with research, not aesthetics – every design decision traces back to observed user behavior, not a trend. We also know PropTech specifically: the workflows of real estate professionals, the trust bar for financial software, and the multi-device reality of a field-based industry where your product often gets opened from a car or a closing table.
How do you handle user research logistics for real estate professionals?
We own recruitment, scheduling, and incentives end to end. We are experienced at recruiting agents, brokers, property managers, and investors specifically, and know how to structure sessions that respect their time while still producing usable insight. Sessions run remote or on-site depending on which produces better research for the question at hand.
What type of PropTech company is the right fit for this service?
Any stage can benefit, but the highest impact is on companies with an existing product where adoption is lagging expectations, or ones designing a new product who want to get the first version right. The most common fit is a team that shipped features on internal assumptions and is now seeing engagement come in below plan.
