The brand had built a strong reputation for quality homes — but its digital experience wasn't keeping pace. I joined the engagement to answer a core question: how do we elevate the digital and physical homebuying experience to match the promise of a Tradition of Excellence? The answer required understanding the entire customer journey, not just the website.
The Approach
Phase 01
Discovery
What I Set Out to Understand
Before designing anything, I needed to understand where the current experience was failing customers — and why. I conducted competitor analysis, led stakeholder interviews across Sales, Marketing, Construction, and MLS teams, and ran usability testing on the existing site. Four consistent themes emerged that shaped every decision that followed.
Key Insight
The brand was the only competitor without a community site map tool. That single gap made the search experience feel incomplete compared to every alternative a buyer might consider.
Research Opportunities & Challenges
Benchmarking Against the Competition
I benchmarked the brand against five direct competitors. The gaps were clear — community pages lacked a map view, mobile usability was inconsistent, and the content didn't tell a story. Customers who landed on the site had no easy way to narrow down communities, compare homes, or understand what made the brand different. Internally, stakeholders consistently flagged the same pressure points: pricing transparency, a scattered document ecosystem, and communication that relied too heavily on email and phone calls.
Phase 02
Synthesis — Service Blueprint
Making Sense of What I Learned
With research complete, I needed to translate findings into a shared understanding of the full customer journey. I facilitated three workshops with cross-functional teams — mapping every action a customer takes from Home Shopper to Buyer to Owner, alongside every internal action that supports them. What surfaced wasn't just a list of improvements — it was a picture of a fragmented system held together by manual effort and tribal knowledge.
6
Hours of workshops
161
Customer actions mapped
189
Internal actions mapped
53
Supporting systems mapped
Blueprint Findings
Four Areas of Highest Impact
The blueprint made it clear where to focus. Realtor engagement was happening too late in the funnel. MyAccount was underutilized and under-promoted. Post-sale communication was fragmented across phone, email, and in-person appointments. And customers were making major financial decisions without the pricing transparency they needed to feel confident. These four themes became the foundation for everything I designed.
Phase 03
Design — Future Vision Prototypes
With a clear picture of where the experience was breaking down, I moved into concepting. Rather than redesigning everything at once, I focused on five high-impact prototypes — each targeting a specific gap uncovered in research and the blueprint. The goal wasn't perfection; it was to give stakeholders something tangible enough to pressure-test and prioritize.
Website Homepage Redesign
The existing homepage wasn't doing the job of earning trust or driving action. I redesigned it around two priorities: establish the brand's credibility immediately, and get buyers into the search experience as fast as possible. The result was a homepage anchored by a prominent search tool with market and price range selectors, brand proof points — 90+ communities, 65K+ homes built, 4 markets — and a visual hierarchy that guided buyers from inspiration to intent.
Search Feature with Map & List View
In research, I heard consistently that buyers wanted to browse geographically — they knew the general area they wanted to live, and they needed to see what was available there. I designed a map and list view that worked together: the map surfaced communities visually, while the list gave buyers the detail they needed to compare. Filters let users narrow from market down to community down to individual home — a significant improvement over the flat, text-heavy experience that existed before.
Catalog Options List (COL)
Buyers were walking into Design Center appointments having never seen the options catalogue before — a 36-page document handed to them on the spot. It was a lot to absorb in the middle of one of the most significant purchases of their lives. I redesigned it as a visual, plan-based digital experience within MyAccount, letting buyers browse options and see estimated upgrade pricing on their own time, before they ever sat down with a Design Consultant.
Interactive Digital Sales Wall
Model home visits were a black box — the brand had no way of knowing who walked in, what they looked at, or whether they came back. I designed a Check-In kiosk experience for model homes that turned passive visits into active, data-rich engagements. Visitors could check in, create a MyAccount on the spot, and browse plat maps, available homes, and brand differentiators while waiting for a Sales Professional.
Key Insight
Pairing MyAccount creation with the model home check-in was the key insight. It solved two problems at once — lead capture for the brand, and a more personalized follow-up experience for the buyer.
MyAccount Messaging Center
Post-contract communication was a pain point for everyone — buyers juggled calls from Sales, Construction, and the Design Center, often receiving conflicting or duplicated information. I designed a centralized Messaging Center within MyAccount that brought all parties into a single thread: buyers, sales professionals, construction managers, and realtors. One place, one conversation, full visibility.
It wasn't just a UX improvement — it reduced the operational burden of coordinating across teams and gave buyers the transparency they needed to feel in control of one of the biggest decisions of their lives.
Results
Outcomes
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