Role
Founding Product Designer
Timeline
Oct 2022 -
Mar 2023
Industry
Prop-tech
Team
me +
4 founders (GM, product, GTM, CX)
1 developer
Overview —
We partnered with a global real estate firm to explore opportunities to modernise commercial office leasing in a post-pandemic, hybrid-work world. In a market where companies were now locked into long-term leases for underutilised space, we saw an urgent need for a smarter, more flexible subleasing solution.
Through rapid iteration and close collaboration with target customers, we developed Halo, a full-suite platform designed to help corporate tenants market, price, and sublease excess office space with greater ease. By combining space planning tools, market intelligence, and operational support, Halo streamlined a traditionally complex process into a clear and actionable experience.
Challenges & Pivots —
The team was originally pursuing a marketplace for premium flexible offices, but conversations with corporate tenants quickly revealed a deeper need: not for finding new and more flexible space, but for support in managing the space they already had and were tied to.
Industry Challenges
❌ Massive vacancies: many companies have way more office space than they need due to remote and hybrid work
❌ Long-term lease commitments: these same companies are locked into 10-20+ year leases
❌ Rigid leasing models: the traditional leasing process is slow, complex and not designed for flexibility or short-term needs
❌ Market stagnation: landlords struggle to fill space, and tenants are burdened with costs and don’t have the tools to sublease effectively
Corporate Tenant Challenges
❌ Lack of expertise: these companies are not landlords, they don't know how to market, price, or manage leasing processes
❌ No dedicated tools: existing real estate platforms are designed for landlords and brokers, not for tenants trying to sublease their space
❌ Operational burdens: managing listings, pricing strategy, tenant fit-outs and negotiations are time-consuming and confusing
❌ Urgency to act: corporate tenants know they need to reduce financial waste quickly but don't know where to start
These challenges revealed a clear opportunity: corporate tenants needed something to help them quickly and confidently take control of their underutilised space. The real opportunity was in enabling both sides of the transaction: helping companies sublease their excess space while connecting them with the right tenants. Our goal was to provide a solution that met them where they were: overwhelmed, under-resourced, and in urgent need of support and clarity.
Key Design Decisions —
🎯 Role-based insights
We discovered through our research that project directors, site managers, and executives all needed different lenses on the same project data. I designed a customisable KPI Library system that could serve each role's unique needs while maintaining data consistency - an essential requirement when dealing with high-stakes construction decisions.
🤖 Trust-building automation
One of the bigger design challenges was introducing automation to an industry that’s still heavily reliant on Excel and paper reports. I approached this by first automating their most time-consuming tasks, then designing easy and transparent ways to showing the AI's reasoning and manually verify data. This progressive disclosure approach will help build trust and keep users in control of critical decisions that could impact multi-million dollar projects.
🔐 Complex permissions architecture
With the complex ecosystem of players within a given construction project, it was an intricate challenge of designing permissions across that ecosystem. I carefully mapped user journeys and hierarchies, to ensure executives could access high-level insights and confidential information while project managers could work with detailed site information, all within the same platform.
💡 Intuitive yet approachable AI
While AI adoption still varies widely across industries, the construction sector can be particularly hesitant to embrace new technologies. For the AI copilot feature, I wanted to experiment beyond traditional chatbot interfaces while still maintaining familiar interactions. I incorporated example prompts and a prompt library into the experience to ease skepticism and demonstrate the system's potential.
Get instant insights with the AI copilot and prompt library
Create forecasts for project completion and get ahead of delays
Choose which data you see and how you prefer to see it
Get alerted to patterns and verify with remote monitoring
Learnings —
Challenging Initial Assumptions → Pivoting from a top-down, nice-to-have solution ("build it and they will come") to a user-centric platform that tackled real pain points ("meet them where they are") was key to driving customer adoption and building positive sentiment.
Iterate, Test, Iterate Again → Iteration was at the heart of our process—we tested every aspect of the product, from AI feasibility to workflow integrations with dummy data, and refined at every stage. We never sacrificed quality for speed but knew what the right balance was, when.
Building User Trust → Trust is earned, not given. Demonstrating the platform’s value through small wins early on was critical to gaining customer confidence and stakeholder buy-in.