CM² Investment Platform

CM Square was a cryptocurrency-based crowd-sourced real estate investment platform that enabled investors to purchase as little as a single cm² of a property.

I designed and developed the CM Square Investment Platform to create a playful yet user-centric experience that makes real-estate investing more approachable. I conducted qualitative research to formulate a design strategy, used Sketch to create mockups, and developed the front-end with HTML and CSS.

Intro

Context

To better understand the problem space and context, I talked to the marketing department and the founders to understand the problems they wanted to solve.

These were the three main issues in the current real estate investment experience:

  • High barrier of entry: you needed a considerable amount of capital even to entertain the idea of real estate investing.

  • High learning curve: the real estate buying process was complicated. It was full of technical jargon, and it was a convoluted process between brokers, banks, and many other stakeholders.

  • Hard to manage: It was challenging to manage the day-to-day operation of real estate investment by oneself, and it was challenging to find a trustworthy real estate management company.

Strategy

Design Direction

Based on the issues identified and the current stage of the start-up, I devised a strategy to guide the design.

  • Light and playful UI : The UI should be inviting and playful to create a friendly attitude to signify the platform’s simple real estate investment process.

  • Clear and digestible data : Since one share of the property would cost less than a dollar, we should provide only the essential information to simplify the user’s decision-making.

  • Establish trust : Since the startup did not have any brand recognition, we needed to showcase the founders’ experience, well-known investors, social proof to increase trustworthiness.

Challenge

  1. How to create a crypto-based platform for new crypto users?
  2. How to support multiple languages and regions (Hong Kong, Taiwan, and China)?
  3. How to simplify the purchasing and selling flow?

Sketches

There are three main pages: market (property listings, and property details), portfolio (properties owned), wallet (CM2T balance and transaction)).

Mobile Wireframe

Solution

Multi-language Support

This platform would target customers in Taiwan, Hong Kong, and China. We needed to have an English and a Chinese version of the platform. I considered how English text would take up more space than the Chinese text and the subtle cultural difference between the two regions.

  • Leave enough text space for the English version of the platform

  • Option to view in different the units of measurement and currency

  • Use icons when possible to overcome language barriers

Beginner Friendliness

  • Avoid using crypto jargon
  • Develop a tutorial to explain the concept as well as the buying and selling flow
  • Upfront with the volatility of cryptocurrency

Flowchart

Purchasing Flow

We initially decided that the user would acquire CM2T tokens from cryptocurrency exchanges to purchase the property shares. The founders later wanted to allow users to use USD to buy the property shares. However, direct purchasing created a layer of complexity in the purchasing loop. Now we had to consider payment integrations and make the process as smooth as possible for users.

I created flow charts to map out different scenarios and made sure the dialogue content was non-technical and straightforward, so the user didn’t have to overthink while going through the dialogues.

Final

Mobile User Interface

Desktop User Interface

Following the mobile-first design principle, I developed the desktop version by expanding on the mobile-design.

Retrospective

What Now?

The team had reached its initial product milestone. The team later expanded to focus solely on the Mongolian real estate market real estate and has now pivoted to AI real estate investment SaaS product.

What I Would Do Differently?

Consider the experience from end to end
Users still need to use cryptocurrency exchange to cash out to government-backed currency (eg, USD, HKD). I should have proposed a design plan that considers the end-to-end experience of purchasing/selling experience.

Pay closer attention to the onboarding experience
The onboarding process was designed and developed in a week. I should have also created a series of tutorial videos to introduce users to the platform or create an interactive tutorial to help to explain it.

Push for more usability testings
I should’ve pushed to have more user testings done to ensure the users understand the platform and how to purchase/sell shares on the platform.