Randy Jones

Product Design

2018-09-26T19:35:34-07:00

CloudFile is a document storage product tailored for landlords. Embeded within property management software, CloudFile allows customers to go paperless and avoid the security concerns and hassle of storing hundreds of pages of leasing documents per renter for seven years.

The Problem

“We want to save the environment, just not enough to pay $1.50 per unit per month.”

Discovery

Looking at a report of files in CloudFile, the vast majority were electronically signed documents. The category in a distant second was income related documents. The difference between these categories is the E-Signed documents upload automatically, while income is a manual process. I hypothesized if we could automate proof income, we'd see a major boost in adoption.

I enlisted the help of our team's UX Researcher, Dave Luciano, and we visited leasing offices armed with user testing tasks and questionaires. Leasing agents shared their policy binders, communication process and file scanning and uploading procedures. While we were surprised at how fast the scanning and uploading process was, but there was significant run-around getting the right documents from applicants.

Lesson Learned:

The source of friction was communcating policy and collecting documents

The Solution

We created a self-service UI to capture property income policy and provide detailed instructions and examples. We then added a proof of income uploader in the application. However, analytics revealed applicants would abandon their application while looking for paystubs. We moved the upload post-application payment. Once renters had paid, they were much more invested in providing accurate information. We returned to the leasing office to test the new flow, bringing developers with us to increase team engagement. At our pilot properties 81% of applicants uploaded their documents directly. The remaining 19% brought the correct documents to the leasing office.

1. Setup Income Policies

Properties setup what kinds of income they accept, and what documents are required to prove the income.
Claiming student loans as income when you're not a student? No bueno.

2. Renter Uploads Proof

The online application prompts renters to upload proof-of-income based on type of income claimed.
Have military income? Please upload your LES statement.

3. Files Store Themselves

Leasing agents can subscribe to be notified when new files arrive for review.
Bob Smith just uploaded income for his job at Starbucks. View the paystubs?

The Results

“CloudFile is awesome, awesome, awesome. I didn’t realize how much time we spend begging for income. It saves us 30 minutes per lease!”

Pilot Customer, Community Manager

Before

$600k

Annual Revenue

After

$1.7M

Annual Revenue

Product Marketing

At a startup you wear many hats. In addition to designing and product managing CloudFile, I contributed to the marketing effort. At On-Site we put on an amazing user retreat every year. As the product manager and designer for CloudFile, I had the opportunity to give product upates from the main stage, lead customer workshops, and promote the product with my questionable acting skills. I think I'll stick to design.

Pattern Libraries

2018-09-26T19:35:34-07:00

RealPage is a company that buys companies. They’ve purchased over forty since 2002, and in September, 2018 they bought On-Site, where I’d been the Director of Design for six years.

The Problem

Realpage had 40 different UI’s and 40 different logins. Competitors who had grown organically were making headway selling against our disjointed user experience. In 2013, RealPage executives acknowledged this threat and formed the Unity Team to make single-sign-on and a unified UI a reality. The problem was, when we were acquired in 2018 it still wasn't done.

Discovery

Lesson Learned:

An empowered partnership between designer and developer is the key to real change.

Having created and implemented our own pattern library in 2013, I was excited to learn about the RealPage Asset and UI Library (RAUL). The RealPage design team had created an excellent sketch library laden with components, but the code library was incomplete. I worked with developer Dennis Baskin to interpret the sketch library and implemented RAUL in On-Site within 2 months of acquisition. As a reward for our efficiency, the SVP of Unity, Craig Maness asked us to lead the RAUL UI initiave and help other teams adopt the standard.

The Solution

Dennis and I formed an agile squad with 2 offshore developers and hatched a multi-pronged attack. The Romanians would forge ahead to add the missing 40% of components. Meanwhile Dennis and I would work to improve documentation, support product teams in pairing sessions and remove friction from adoption.

1. Improve Documentation

Remove wiki-based styleguide which goes out of date as soon as the code changes.
Add live styleguide to every release so teams can see the instruction manual for the version they are using
Encorporate GitHub release rss in the build process to teams can see what’s changed.

See RAUL Pattern Library

2. Pair with Product Teams

Split the documentation by audience, for devs a live styleguide focused on usage, for product owners a compliance portal laying out expectations and deadlines for RAUL adoption.
Dennis and I appealed to product devs to reach out to us before escalating issues. Our goal was to unblock teams within 1 hour of pairing.
Created an open-source approach to RAUL, allowing product teams to suggest enhancements and fix bugs.
Released patches for teams within a week, often by close of business next day.

3. Reduce Friction in Adoption

Match compliance expectations with cdn distribution options.
Removing jQuery and Bootstrap dependencies from required components
Create custom element alternatives for compenents to allow html changes to be non-breaking, and to bind with frameworks in play: Vue, React, Angular JS and Angular 6

The Results

The following picture represents a monumental cross-company endeavor which culminated in June 2018 with the launch of RealPage Unified Platform at RealWorld 2018 in Las Vegas. There is still major work to be done around mobile excellence and accessibility, but we've come a long way from 40 separate UIs and logins.

RealPage Unified Platform and UI

I've had the opportunity present to C-level and SVP stakeholders to demonstrate progress and pitch roadmap for continued improvement. I also traveled to RealWorld 2018 where I was part of the team that unveiled the new Unified Platform to our customers. To quote one customer, “Holy cow. You actually finished it?”

I also developed the following guerilla marketing technique to raise awareness about RAUL. Whenever I have a meeting about RAUL, I leave a RAUL handstyle in the conference room on the whiteboard. Not sure if it's working, but it's fun.

Typeface Design

2018-09-09T19:35:34-07:00

The addictive thing about typeface design is investing hundreds of hours before you can find out if its any good at all. Seriously. I hope it is good. It might possibly be good. But in that glorious moment when you set your first paragraph, you discover what the typeface truly is.

A Fontastic Journey

Typeface design started when I took a few classes at School of Visual Arts to fill the gaps between freelance jobs. My instructor was the legendary Ed Benguiat of PLINC fame. In addition to his weath of typographic knowledge he was always ready with hilarious advice: “If you want to do it wrong, keep doing what you’re doing. It might be a good idea because sometimes wrong is right.” I discovered typeface design is a lousy way to make a $5 in royalty payments, but I learned quite a bit about typography. I still try to find opportunities to sneak in some typeface design. For example, the font you’re reading right now is an unfinished typeface called Oregano Sans in four weights which i started almost a decade ago.

Randy Jones

Product Design

The Problem

Discovery

The source of friction was communcating policy and collecting documents

The Solution

1. Setup Income Policies

2. Renter Uploads Proof

3. Files Store Themselves

The Results

“CloudFile is awesome, awesome, awesome. I didn’t realize how much time we spend begging for income. It saves us 30 minutes per lease!”

Before

$600k

After

$1.7M

Product Marketing

Pattern Libraries

The Problem

Discovery

An empowered partnership between designer and developer is the key to real change.

The Solution

1. Improve Documentation

2. Pair with Product Teams

3. Reduce Friction in Adoption

The Results

Typeface Design

A Fontastic Journey

Commercial Typefaces