Tenancy Manager
I led the end-end design of Rightmove’s Tenancy Manager, taking it from 0->1, from research to implementation. Tenancy Manager is now live and adopted by 100+ estate agencies and has become a chargeable tool within Rightmove’s suite of products.
Role
Senior Product Designer
Domain
Proptech B2B
Duration
August – Oct 2021
Team
Product Manager, Engineers, QA
Context
With the lettings market booming, Rightmove (the UK’s leading property search platform) saw an opportunity to expand into the rental space and diversify its revenue streams. Our goal was to create a tool that streamlined letting agents’ processes, launching as a beta before evolving into a fully chargeable product.
Problem
Progressing tenancies is a time-consuming, manual process for estate agents, involving endless email and phone chasing, duplicate data entry, repetitive bank checks, and the challenge of staying compliant to evolving legislation. The aim of Tenancy Manager was to streamline and automate this process where possible.
Goals
Help lettings agents by automating the manual tenancy progression process, with the goal of scaling into a chargeable product
- Automate "low value" tasks
Repetitive admin tasks should be automated, so agents can focus on revenue driving activities, like chasing new leads.
- Validate agents relevance
Not all steps should be automated. Agents need to feel in control, so keep certain tasks manual at key moments.
- Build trust with prospective tenants
Design the experience to make tenants feel secure, especially as they will be handling large online payments.
- Design for scalability
Build with flexible architecture and reusable components to support a growing number of agencies and tenancies.
Final solution
The beta release of Tenancy Manager was initially launched to a select group of agents before being rolled out more widely. As Rightmove’s firs tool of its kind, it streamlines tenancy progression, reducing admin time from hours per tenancy to just 10 minutes of focused work. Key details entered in the offer form automatically carry through to referencing and contracts, removing duplicate data entry and cutting down manual effort.
Performance
– Beta launched to 6 estate agencies
– Live in 30 branches as of 2022
– Facilitated over £100K in deposit payments
– A chargeable product as of 2023
Research
Discovery research began with interviews of eight letting agents across roles and company sizes to uncover key needs. From these insights, a streamlined flow was mapped out to reduce agents’ workload, defining the scope for beta, V1, and V2. To enable the new flow, we identified four key pages for the beta: an offer form, offer summary, dashboard, and tenancy overview. This case study focuses on the dashboard design.
Design approach
During discovery, agents voiced concerns about a lack of control. Our hypothesis was that a dashboard would improve visibility across active tenancies, addressing this issue. I took an activity-based design approach for the dashboard, prioritising task success over engagement by using clear progressive disclosure.
Defining the dashboard layout
After presenting concepts to the squad and design team, the two most popular ideas (timeline and kanban) were chosen. To validate them, I interviewed four estate agencies to understand how they’d use each. Feedback favoured the timeline, but a couple of agents found the kanban board better for task management.
Pushing kanban
Seeing potential in the kanban concept, I spent three days refining it, segmenting the process by tenancy stages and task types. The time based kanban concept assumed agents worked strategically based on time they had available, whereas the timeline concept assumed agents prioritised properties by urgency, regardless of the task. To better understand agents’ workflow, I decided to step back to observe how they planned their daily tasks.
“A day in the life” discovery
I conducted additional sessions with agents, asking them to walk me through their typical workday step by step and how they prioritised tasks. This level of detail hadn’t been explored in previous research, which had focused on the broader tenancy progression flow.
Key findings
– Agents prioritise work based on the urgency of the tenancy
– They’re experience so know that they have to do each day
– Tenancy progression is a low priority as it holds no monetary value.
– Their day is highly reactive, with no fixed structure.
– Time constraints force them to multitask
Rather than strategically planning tasks, agents worked through tenancies from most to least urgent. Since tenancy progression didn’t generate revenue like chasing new leads, they had little motivation to change their workflow. They needed a system that ran in the background with minimal effort. Agents needed the timeline concept
Timeline IA
Insights from the workshops shaped key questions each timeline card needed to answer at a glance, such as “Is this urgent?”, “Who is involved?”, and “What do I need to do?”. Using grey-boxing, I structured the hierarchy of these questions within the UI, then usability tested my final designs with agents.
Unique components
I collaborated with the design system team to develop new components where needed. Since Tenancy Manager was part of Rightmove Plus (the central hub for agent tools) it had to align with its dark design style.
Final design: Offer form
Letting agents complete an offer form in Tenancy Manager after a viewing if the tenant wants to proceed. Details entered carry through the entire journey, removing duplicate data entry during referencing or contract stages.
Final design: Dashboard
The dashboard provides letting agents with a bird’s-eye view of their active tenancies, showing progress at a glance and highlighting any actions needed to keep things moving.
Final design: Tenancy Overview
Clicking on a property in the dashboard takes agents to the tenancy overview page, where they can access detailed information, including uploaded documents and contact details for both agents and tenants.
Outcomes
- Successful launch and adoption
The Beta was released in 2022 to six estate agencies. Tenancy Manager is now live with 100+ tenancies and has become a chargeable product within Rightmove’s agent tools ecosystem.
- Increased efficiency for agents
User testing of the beta release revealed that Tenancy Manager reduced the time agents spend progressing tenancies to just 10 minutes of focused work.
Key takeaways
Giving yourself space to explore and push ideas can lead to unexpected insights, even if they don’t become the final concept. While we didn’t go with the kanban dashboard, the additional research it sparked helped refine the timeline concept in ways I might not have considered otherwise.
Post launch
We conducted ethnographic research to observe Tenancy Manager in action within estate agencies. Through three in-person visits, we shadowed users and mapped their workflows. Seeing the product I designed in this real-world context was incredibly rewarding, and the insights gained directly informed decisions made after the beta phase.
