Real estate professionals abandon software that adds friction to their workflow. If your product feels like a tech tool instead of a business tool, adoption stalls regardless of how powerful the features are. Winston Francois designs PropTech products that fit into how real estate professionals actually work. Our clients build products people use by choice, not by mandate.
The Problem
Your product was built around technical capabilities, not user workflows
Many PropTech products are designed around what the technology can do rather than how real estate professionals work. The result is a powerful system that nobody wants to use because it does not match their mental model of their job. Agents think in terms of deals and relationships, not data fields and workflows. Property managers think in terms of buildings and tenants, not modules and dashboards. When the product does not match how users think, adoption requires constant training and enforcement.
You are designing without enough direct user research
Product decisions based on internal assumptions about what users want lead to features nobody asked for and gaps in the experience that frustrate daily users. Real estate professionals have specific needs shaped by their local market, their role, and their existing tools. Without regular, direct research with actual users, your product roadmap is built on guesses. Every feature built on a guess is a bet that could have been validated for the cost of a few user interviews.
Your user experience degrades as you add features
As PropTech products mature, they accumulate features that make the interface increasingly complex. Navigation gets deeper, screens get denser, and new users face a steeper learning curve. Without intentional design governance, every new feature makes the product slightly harder to use. Eventually, the product that once felt simple and focused feels bloated and confusing, exactly the complaint users had about the incumbent you were trying to replace.
How We Help
Winston Francois provides product design and research services for PropTech companies that want to build products real estate professionals choose to use. We bring design discipline and user research rigor to product teams that may not have those capabilities in-house.
We start with research. We conduct user interviews, contextual inquiries, and usability studies with your actual users, agents, brokers, property managers, investors, whoever your product serves. We go where they work. We watch them use your product and the other tools in their stack. We understand the full context of their workday, not just the moments they spend in your software. This research grounds every design decision in observed behavior rather than assumptions.
From the research, we build user models and journey maps that your entire team can reference. These are not academic exercises, they are practical tools that help your product team, your engineers, and your [marketing](/services/marketing/) team understand who they are building for and what those people care about. When a product decision comes up, the user models give you a framework for evaluating options based on user impact.
Design work follows research directly. We design interfaces that match the mental models of real estate professionals, organizing information around deals, properties, contacts, and timelines rather than around technical system concepts. We prototype key flows and test them with users before engineering begins, so you invest development time in designs that have been validated. Our [creative](/services/creative/) team ensures the visual execution matches the quality of the interaction design.
For existing products, we conduct design audits that identify the highest-friction points in the current experience. We prioritize redesign work by the impact each improvement will have on adoption, retention, and user satisfaction. Not every screen needs to be redesigned, we focus your limited design resources on the moments that matter most to users and the business.
We build design systems that scale with your product. As you add features and expand into new user segments, the design system ensures consistency without requiring a designer on every project. Component libraries, interaction patterns, and design guidelines give your engineering team the tools to build new features that feel like they belong in the product.
All of this connects to your [growth strategy](/services/strategy/) and [measurement](/services/measurement/) practice. Product design directly impacts activation rates, feature adoption, retention, and NPS. We set up the tracking needed to measure design impact so you can quantify the return on design investment and make informed decisions about where to invest next.
What we deliver
- User research program — interview protocols, user recruitment, research execution, and insights report
- User models and journey maps — segment-specific models and journey maps for your PropTech users
- Product design — wireframes, prototypes, and high-fidelity designs for key flows and features
- Design audit and prioritization — friction analysis of existing product with prioritized improvement roadmap
- Design system — component library, interaction patterns, and design 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 in 90-day sprints that follow a research-design-validate cycle. The first month is research-heavy, user interviews, usability testing of the current product, and competitive experience analysis. We deliver an insights report that gives your team a clear picture of what users need, what frustrates them, and what opportunities exist.
Month two is design and prototyping. We take the highest-priority opportunities from the research phase and design solutions. Prototypes go through at least one round of user testing before we consider them ready for development. This testing catches issues that are cheap to fix in design and expensive to fix in code.
Month three is refinement and handoff. Final designs go through engineering review to ensure feasibility. The design system gets documented and handed off. We train your team on how to use the research insights and design system going forward. Each sprint ends with a clear set of recommendations for the next cycle of research and design work.
How We Work
In the first 30 days, we conduct 12-20 user interviews and usability sessions, analyze the findings, and present a research insights report to your product leadership. We also perform a heuristic review of your current product experience. Your team participates in research synthesis sessions where we identify patterns and prioritize opportunities together.
During days 30 through 60, we design solutions for the top priorities. You will see wireframes, prototypes, and user flow diagrams in iterative review cycles. We test prototypes with users midway through this phase and adjust based on feedback. Design reviews with your engineering team ensure technical feasibility before we finalize anything.
From day 60 to 90, we deliver final designs ready for development, build out the design system components, and document everything for your team. The final sprint review includes a recommended research and design roadmap for the next two quarters. We can continue as embedded design partners or hand off to your internal design team.
Your team includes a lead product designer, a user researcher, and a design system specialist. We scale the team based on the scope of design work and the number of user segments we are researching.
- Higher product adoption through user-centered design
- Faster onboarding and reduced time to first value
- Improved user satisfaction and NPS scores
- Scalable design system that maintains quality as the product grows
If your real estate / proptech company needs product design & research leadership, we should talk.
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Frequently asked questions
How much does product design and research cost for a PropTech company?
Design and research engagements are scoped based on the complexity of your product, the number of user segments, and whether you need a full design system build or focused design work on specific flows. We price as fixed-fee sprints so you know the total investment upfront. Most PropTech companies start with a single 90-day sprint and extend based on the results and their roadmap needs.
How long does it take to see the impact of product design improvements?
Design changes that improve onboarding and core workflows show measurable impact on activation and engagement metrics within 30-60 days of shipping. Broader design system improvements and information architecture changes take longer to implement but produce compounding benefits over 2-3 quarters. We set up tracking for the specific metrics each design change targets so you can see the before-and-after clearly.
How does your design team work with our engineering team?
We work directly with your engineers throughout the design process. Engineers participate in design reviews, provide feasibility feedback, and help us understand technical constraints early. We deliver designs with detailed specifications and component documentation that make implementation straightforward. The design system we build includes components that map to your engineering team's front-end framework.
What makes Winston Francois different from other product design agencies?
We lead with research, not aesthetics. Every design decision we make is grounded in observed user behavior, not design trends. We also understand PropTech specifically, the workflows of real estate professionals, the trust requirements of financial software, and the multi-device reality of a field-based industry. We design for people who are often using your product from a car, a property showing, or a closing table.
How do you handle user research logistics for real estate professionals?
Real estate professionals are busy and often reluctant to participate in research. We handle all recruitment, scheduling, and incentive management. We are experienced at recruiting real estate professionals specifically, agents, brokers, property managers, and investors, and know how to structure sessions that respect their time while generating actionable insights. We conduct sessions remotely or on-site depending on what will produce the best research outcomes.
What type of PropTech company needs product design and research services?
Product design and research is valuable for PropTech companies at any stage, but the highest impact comes when you have an existing product with users who are not adopting it as expected, or when you are designing a new product and want to get the initial experience right. Companies that have built features based on internal assumptions and are seeing lower-than-expected engagement are the most common fit for our services.
