homegenius Real Estate
Claim a Home
What is homegenius Real Estate?
The homegenius platform is a real estate search tool that puts home buying, selling and owning tools in customers’ hands within a digital experience.
Introduction
Claiming a home allows users to update property details and upload new photos to receive a more accurate valuation. Every property is assigned a base estimate called the geniusprice. Once a user claims a home, they receive a personalized mygeniusprice, which factors in the original geniusprice inputs along with any updates the user has made to home facts or imagery. We're planning to enhance this process by allowing users to select comparable properties from a curated list, which will further refine their mygeniusprice estimate.
Desktop Original design. Live on Prod
Mobile Original design. Live on Prod
Defining the Problem
Feature Enhancements:
Give users the ability to select comparables to help refine their mygeniusprice. Need to ensure the process doesn’t feel long or confusing.
Make it more obvious that a home is claimed. Think of ways to make claiming a home more interesting for the user. What is the difference between a claimed home and the default public view property details page?
Continue to educate the user on the differences between geniusprice and mygeniusprice.
Design Improvements: Visual consistency/branding.
Design for all Viewports: New pricing section must work across all devices.
Understanding our Users
The primary users are individuals who own a home and are interested in learning more about the current valuation of their home or are users who do not own a home and are interested in the our owner tools.
Early or alternate ideation
Competitive Research: looked into other real estate search tools.
Iterations: Worked on several iterations exploring ways to add the select comparables step, editing steps in the future, and creating an “owner view” of some sort where they can see all of the changes they made.
Prototype and Usertest: Put together a prototype in figma and tested with internal users and users on usertesting.com to see how individuals felt about the number of steps and if anything was confusing.
Competitive Analysis
Final Solution
Claim Home Steps
Step 1 Confirmation: Users must acknowledge and agree to the VOW terms and conditions before proceeding. We’ve added a new section asking users to indicate whether they are the homeowners. This helps us collect useful data and, in the future, tailor tools based on their selection. On hg Real Estate, anyone can claim any home—no ownership verification is required. Unlike our competitors, this approach supports real estate investors who want to explore owner tools before potentially purchasing a property.
Step 2 Home Facts: The Home Facts page allows users to update any details that may have changed since they last purchased the home. The geniusprice value is initially based on MLS data from the previous sale, but if the owner has made updates or improvements since then, they can revise their home information to receive a more accurate valuation (mygeniusprice).
Step 3 Select Comparables: Selecting comparables is a new step in the claim home process. It allows users to choose recently sold homes in their area that closely match their own. This helps generate a more accurate mygeniusprice.
Summary: I added a summary/confirmation modal to highlight the difference between the geniusprice and the mygeniusprice. User testers often found the difference between these two values confusing, particularly in how they’re calculated. The goal of this modal is to help clarify those differences and reduce confusion.
Figma Mobile Designs
Claim Home Page
Created a dedicated “Claimed Home View” where users can see the edits they’ve made, photos uploaded, and comparables selected. The user can easily toggle to the public view to see the original listing information.
The Claimed Home View is designed to allow for future sections to be added like a Renovation Studio and a more detailed property history.
More information about the difference between geniusprice and mygeniusprice.
My role
Collaborated closely with the Product Owner to gather and understand project requirements.
Conducted competitive analysis and design research to inform decisions.
Participated in design workshops with fellow homegenius designers to explore and define optimal solutions.
Created low-fidelity wireframes and facilitated internal design critiques with the Product Owner, UX Director, and design team.
Developed an interactive prototype, tested by internal employees and users through UserTesting.com.
Prepared organized design files for developer handoff, including responsive layouts and a comprehensive documentation of states for the new pricing component.
Attended weekly backlog refinement meetings with developers and Business Analysts to review designs, address questions, and clarify functionality.
Supported the QA team throughout the development process by providing design guidance and reviewing builds to ensure visual and functional accuracy.
Next steps and learnings
Reviews have been mostly positive. During our initial user test with a prototype everyone was able to complete all steps with ease and did not feel that it was too long or tedious. Some minor feedback received:
Confusion around how to toggle between the public view and the claimed view. We have iterated on this since and found a better solution.
Team Members
Product Owner - Dalisa
Lead UX/UI Designer - Sarah Walsh
Tools Used
Figma