FormLayer
About the Project
This project focused on shaping a multi-tenant SaaS platform for property management—supporting tenants in reporting issues and enabling building managers to plan, track, and resolve maintenance work.
My role centered on problem framing, UX strategy, and system-level design. The goal was to define a production-ready MVP that could meet European privacy requirements while remaining simple, coherent, and scalable. Rather than starting with features or screens, the work began by understanding the ecosystem, constraints, and core workflows that would define the product.
Process & Approach
1. Framing the Problem Space
Property management involves multiple user groups with very different goals, devices, and levels of engagement. Early on, I focused on clarifying:
- Who the primary users are
- What success looks like for each role
- Where friction or risk typically appears in existing workflows
- Which constraints (privacy, compliance, operational complexity) would shape every decision
This framing helped establish a shared understanding of what the product needed to solve—and just as importantly, what it should not try to solve yet.
2. Early Design as a Thinking Tool
Instead of jumping directly into polished UI, I used low-fidelity Figma designs to explore structure, flows, and responsibilities within the system.
These early designs were intentionally rough and focused on:
- Mapping end-to-end user journeys
- Breaking complex workflows into manageable tasks
- Testing assumptions about information hierarchy and role separation
- Creating a shared language between product, design, and engineering
Figma functioned less as a visual design tool and more as a collaborative whiteboard—allowing ideas to be discussed, challenged, and refined quickly.
3. Designing for Multiple Roles in One Platform
A key design challenge was supporting tenants, building managers, and administrators within a single platform—without creating cognitive overload or fragmented experiences.
The solution was a unified system with role-specific experiences, where each user only sees what is relevant to them:
- Tenants are guided through fast, mobile-first reporting flows
- Managers receive structured overviews, planning tools, and operational control
- Administrative concerns like access and data separation remain invisible but foundational
This approach improved consistency, reduced duplication, and made the product easier to extend over time.
Key Design Considerations
For Tenants
- Frictionless entry with no downloads or account complexity
- Clear, fast issue reporting from a mobile context
- Immediate feedback to build trust and reduce uncertainty
For Building Managers
- Visual overviews to support prioritization and coordination
- Tools for proactive planning, not just reactive issue handling
- Workflows that turn observations into actionable tasks
For the Platform
- Privacy and data separation treated as baseline expectations
- Design decisions that reduce operational overhead and future risk
Defining the MVP
The MVP was defined through intentional reduction, focusing on the smallest set of capabilities needed to support real-world use:
- Core reporting and tracking flows
- A clear mental model for recurring maintenance via the “Year Wheel”
- Reusable components and patterns instead of one-off solutions
Every feature included had a clear purpose; everything else was consciously deferred.
Outcome
The outcome was a clear, shared product vision supported by early design artifacts that aligned stakeholders and enabled confident execution.
The resulting MVP provided:
- A coherent experience across multiple user roles
- A strong foundation for privacy, trust, and scalability
- A system that can grow organically without rethinking its core structure
Most importantly, the process ensured that design decisions were grounded in real workflows, explicit constraints, and long-term thinking, not just surface-level usability.