The company empowers commercial real estate finance professionals to create more industry connections and close more deals by streamlining, prioritizing, and analyzing their loan activities and lender relations on one platform.
RealAtom has been on the US real estate market for more than five years. Located in Arlington, VA, it helps lenders and borrowers make fast and legal deals throughout the USA.
RealAtom Project Overview
The team of RealAtom had an idea to create the nation’s first end-to-end platform for commercial real estate loans powered by algorithms to get the best user experience. Our task was to create a design for the UX platform and landing pages for borrowers and lenders.
Existing Problems
There were several challenges our team faced while working on the project:
Long search of a lender for a specific type of financing;
Intermediaries in the form of banks and other organizations;
Long procedure to obtain a loan from the bank;
Long search for the borrowers who meet the criteria for lending;
Inability to negotiate loan terms;
Uncertainty on the borrower’s creditworthiness;
Inability of the borrowers to determine loan conditions;
The platform didn’t seem reliable;
Long login process for lenders and borrowers.
Audience Definition
Before starting the design process, we did UX research, including User Personas, User Journey, Mind Map. As a result, we created two portraits of the service users — a Borrower and a Lander. That’s how they look like:
Joseph, 52 y.o.
A RealAtom’s user type: a Borrower (Entity or Individual)
About: Joseph can have any type of work. He must be a creditworthy client to get a credit from a bank.
Needs & Goals: He needs to rent any type of property.
Thomas, 48 y.o.
A Real Atom’s user type: a Lender
About: Thomas can be a representative of a real estate company or work in another sphere. But, he must have the property for borrowers.
Needs & Goals: He needs to be sure of the borrower’s creditworthiness and have all necessary documents for legal deals.
Role and Scope
The project scope outlines the goals that need to be achieved when delivering the final product or service. Our goals were to offer practical solutions to the existing problems and satisfy the audience’s needs.
After discovery meetings and an asset audit, we created mood boards and then collaborated to produce a visual direction. Having determined the problems, target audience, resources, and budget, we started the project development process.
Our design team consisted of 2 UI/UX designers working during the whole project development process. One more designer joined the team at the stage of adaptation for mobile and tablet. The PM curated the workflow, and a group of developers joined the project when the design team completed their part.
A Mind Map and wireframes helped us to arrange the information architecture and create perfect solutions. The Design Process itself took us 6-8 months to complete. During this time, we were developing the project step-by-step, taking into account the smallest details.
Design Process
Our design team’s main task was to create a bright and clean design for two types of user interfaces: account for a Borrower and account for a Lender. Users should be able to see all the necessary information to make a legal deal.
Our managers agreed with the client about the design style in advance. After defining the general design style, we began to create the key components for this project. The behavior and relationship with other components our designers described in the design system.
We suggested using the corporate colors of RealAtom — blue and orange — for the UI and logo. Light colors and shadows along with appropriate typography were aimed to create the perfect digital product. And that’s how the final version of the dashboard looked like.
Results and Data
The main aim of this project was to solve the existing problems and to strengthen the weaknesses. Therefore, the results are the following:
Lending without intermediaries. We made a user-friendly platform that easily connects borrowers and lenders.
An easy choice for loan terms. As the project contained vast amounts of data (e.g., the loan conditions from lenders, terms of rent, etc.), we suggested organizing it in the form of tables. It makes it possible for both lenders and borrowers to compare their offers and conclude a transaction on the most favorable terms.
Confidential money and document exchange. We ensured that the parties can agree on loan conditions and exchange documents without worrying about the confidentiality of information.
Communication 24/7. The presence of internal chat makes communication between borrowers and lenders efficient, providing the 24/7 access for communication at any convenient time.
Testimonials From Our Client
Cadabra Studio is happy to get positive feedback from our client Maria Sharma, a Co-Founder of RealAtom:
“Cadabra’s work led to an MVP, capital investment, and an initial customer base. They’ve managed the project effectively and have demonstrated their talent and agility. Their high-quality work has led to an ongoing partnership”.
Summary
RealAtom, a marketplace for commercial real estate loans, is the experience we are proud of. We helped the product define UX, as well as to design the platform, presentations and landing pages. It was a great potential for a company to launch an MVP which helped enter the market, raise seed-round funds, and gain an initial customer base.
Now, RealAtom’s goals are to increase their conversions and provide an easy to use interface, to retain existing customers.
If you are looking for a partner in software development and design for a real estate project (or any other similar project) contact us to discuss further cooperation. Cadabra Studio is happy to be a trusted partner for our clients.
