Redesigning document-sharing for real estate agents.
2022
UX Researcher & Product Designer
InstaDocs is Ready Media Group's document-sharing feature used by real estate agencies to securely share property documentation with prospective buyers. When I joined the project, InstaDocs was already live, but somewhat misunderstood internally. My task was to uncover how agencies actually used the feature, validate or challenge business assumptions, and design a more intuitive, focused, and valuable experience for both agents and purchasers.
Discover
InstaDocs was originally pitched as a value add to increase conversion on Ready Media Group's property listings — a way to sweeten the deal for agents. Internally, we assumed agents were using it to share documentation and would appreciate deep insights into buyer engagement. We also speculated there may be appetite for a standalone version of the tool.
To validate those assumptions, we interviewed seven active users. Their feedback painted a much messier picture:
"Our systems are incredibly old, buggy and not user friendly."
"We use OneDrive and Dropbox when not using the dataroom."
"I had to manually change 501 documents to allow prospects to download."
We built an affinity map to group and cluster insights, and developed a core persona to guide our thinking — Sarah, a digital marketing manager at a mid-sized real estate agency, juggling legacy systems and manual workarounds.
Define
Our research led to several key insights:
Simplicity and security trumped granular analytics — most users just wanted a clean, professional way to share files.
Time-saving workflows mattered more than dashboards — the manual labour involved in file setup and permissions was a consistent pain point.
Only high-level stats mattered — users wanted to know who downloaded what, not dwell in page-level analytics.
These findings helped us redefine our goal: streamline document sharing and make InstaDocs feel like a polished, modern tool — not an afterthought. It also clarified that buyer experience and agent workflows both needed attention to drive real value.
Design
We designed two parallel flows: one for agents uploading and managing documentation, and another for buyers accessing datarooms. The agent interface was simplified to reduce setup friction, and key actions like access permissions and file previews were made more intuitive.
We then ran moderated usability testing sessions with several high-profile agency clients. These tests focused on core interactions like uploading files, managing access, and reviewing basic insights.
The designs were iterated in response to:
Misunderstood terminology
Confusion around file download visibility
Edge cases like multi-agent collaboration on a single listing
We treated each test session as a checkpoint to validate decisions, not just confirm them.
Deliver
The updated InstaDocs interface rolled out to positive feedback, with reduced support queries and clearer internal alignment on the product’s purpose. Beyond visual polish, we delivered:
Clearer agent onboarding flows
Intuitive permission settings
Insight dashboards that emphasised only what mattered
I led the UX research, journey mapping, persona development, and worked closely with our product and dev teams to ensure what we delivered matched both user needs and business intent. The project helped set a new baseline for product quality inside Ready Media Group.
