The Future of Real Estate Technology | Console Go + Inspect

Aimed at providing an easy-to-use experience for our PMs, Go+Inspect has been carefully designed with the same attention to detail users expect from B2C retail applications. The team endeavoured to ensure that the quality reflected in popular mobile applications through intuitive design was applied to Console Go+Inspect. The design challenge was that we had to focus on both the initial release but also allow for future growth without redesigning the framework. For the initial release, inspections were the primary feature but the designs had to allow for many more new features to be added continually for the next several years.

Essential to PMs fulfilling their legislative obligations is the requirement to conduct inspections in their rental properties. Based on research, an opportunity was identified to deliver additional value to our customers, and an additional source of revenue. The desired emotional connection associated with Go+Inspect is satisfaction and ease. We have achieved this by understanding the needs of our customers and reflecting their desired experience. The design was developed to replicate inspections processes by identifying standardised methods PMs schedule, process and complete inspections; adopting these behaviours into an advanced mobile application with key actions positioned front and centre to the user.

At Console, we also follow user-centred design principles which informs our development process. Only when our users are satisfied with our product will we have earned the right to sell them more products. In this way, good design is good for business. Our process follows an iterative process aimed at actively listening and continually improving based on customer feedback at each stage of the product life cycle. We aim to provide simple and enjoyable experiences for our customers and aim to set the standard for good SaaS design for our industry.

Central on the home page is a calendar, containing a visual list of inspections prioritised by daily activity. This calendar was a key innovation in our design, as we wanted users to quickly access the full calendar. The primary innovation in the calendar design was the development of a single line view of the current week with a one-touch ability to open the full month and effortlessly slide forwards and backwards to see future and past inspections. A market-leading feature aimed at providing an advanced user experience is the paperless inspection process. For example, when conducting an inspection, the user effortlessly takes photos and comments for each room and then shares the finalised structured report with the tenants for them to review feedback on their native mobile app. The end-to-end process had to be achieved without resorting to printing out reports. With many of our customers using service as a key USP for their clients, we wanted PMs to send an SMS to their tenants to remind them of upcoming inspections planned for the day. Tenants commonly receive initial entry notices for inspections many weeks prior to the inspection date and appreciate a friendly reminder on the day.