JLL TM Tracker
UI/UX, Research, Product Management | 2022-2024
Simplify, simplify, simplify!
Team
2 Product Managers
1 Scrum Master
1 Designer (Me)
1 Engineering Lead
Team of Engineers
Timeline
2022-2024
My Role
Design Lead
Research
Product Management (Partially)
Research
User Interview
Usability Testing
Surveys
Teams Chat & Poll
Design Workshops
Figma Prototype Comments
Overview
The Company
JLL (Jones Lang LaSalle) is a global real estate company that helps people buy, sell, lease, and manage commercial properties. It offers services like property management, investment and asset management, real estate development, and workplace strategy.
The Product
TM Tracker (Transaction Management Tracker) is an internal tool that helps commercial real estate teams work more efficiently and make a greater impact by streamlining the transaction process.
My Role
Product Design (Sole designer): Defined the user experience, meeting both user and business needs
User Research: Led and conducted user research
Product Management (Partially): Defined product requirements and helped build and prioritize product backlog
Timeline
2022-2023: I redesigned the existing platform to improve usability, utility, and speed.
2023-2024: I worked on new sets of features, focusing on enabling portfolio strategy planning.
The Redesign
1. Overview
The team was planning for a transition from Retool to React to improve platform performance. I thought it was a great opportunity to redefine the product user experience from usability to incorporating the latest design system and branding. To redesign the product, I set out to identify underlying usability issues and areas for improvement to help prioritize the work and develop a strategy for the redesign.
2. Research
Goal
To answer the following questions to guide the redesign:
What’s working and what’s not working?
Who are our users?
How do we help TMs work more efficiently, effectively, and proactively?
Timeline
Apr 2022 (2 weeks)
Methods
User Interview
To understand user needs, goals, challenges, and how they work. To collect user feedback on areas for improvement.
8 existing users (1 hr/session)
Usability Testing
To identify what’s working, what’s not working, and how severe the issues are by asking users to perform scenario-based tasks and observe their behavior.
6 participants who have NOT used or heard of the product (30 min/session)
I spoke to 14 participants to collect user insights that informed our redesign direction. Personal data is blurred out to protect privacy.
Each session was recorded and carefully analyzed by tagging insights discovered throughout the recording. The image above shows key insights grouped by theme to highlight patterns and connections.
3. Findings & Recommendations
Critical Issues
Efficiency: Users ended up spending more time instead of saving time with the tool.
Reliability: The transaction status logic was flawed, which confused the users and clients.
Utility: Users wanted to see the comments directly from the transactions list view for convenience and awareness.
Usability: Users failed to discover functionalities due to poor user interface design.
Flexibility: Users could not go back to previous steps in progress tracking, which failed to meet the needs of the dynamic nature of the business.
Client experience: Users were frustrated when their clients saw the ”delayed” label, when that was not reflecting the reality.
Performance: Slow loading speed was hurting adoption.
Data accuracy: Inaccurate data was hurting client trust.
4. Redesign Objectives
So, what do users really want?
If we want users to abandon their existing tools and processes that they hold so dearly and switch to new ones, we need to give them what they need. Our research revealed what mattered most, and the redesign focused on improving these key areas:
Product Strategy
With clear insights in hand, the next step was to define a focused approach. I proposed guiding principles rooted in a single goal:
How do we deliver value to users quickly?
Follow a user-centered design process - The existing tool was not built around this process, resulting in a series of issues that compounded over time.
Invention over enhancement - Instead of fixing what’s wrong, do what’s right.
Start simple - Simple → Complex
Enable, then optimize - Enable → Optimize
Users first - User → Business (See the “Lessons Learned” section for the details)
Building product backlog
The scale of redesign that we wanted to achieve was massive, so how did we get started? I broke down the project into user stories with priority based on user impact and design effort:
5. Design Process
Design with the users in each step
The key to successful design is staying close to the users along the way. I facilitated regular design workshops with stakeholders and users to validate assumptions and co-create solutions. We use design sketches, mockups, and clickable prototypes to foster discussion and collect constructive feedback.
I facilitated regular design workshops with stakeholders and users to validate assumptions and co-create solutions. Data is blurred out to protect privacy.
6. Outcome & Impact
We successfully improved the following areas with the redesign. Unfortunately, the development was canceled due to budget prioritization.
Utility - The tool now features data and capabilities that users wanted. (e.g, ability to see comments in the transaction list view)
Usability - The tool is much easier to use with fewer clicks, fewer back-and-forth, and a well-structured UI design that optimizes readability (e.g, new UI makes it easier to scan for data).
Flexibility - The tool is more flexible in accommodating the needs of different regions, clients, and teams.
Efficiency - Task completion time has been greatly reduced.
Trust - We fixed the status label logic that caused confusion and misunderstanding, which helped restore trust from our users.
Example: Creating a transaction, simplified!
While no one complained about this, I challenged the existing workflow to simplify it—users had to fill out over 28 fields just to create a transaction, which they often delayed. By working with users, we cut it down to just 2 essential fields, moving the rest to later. This dramatically sped up the process.
Complete user flow from creating to closing out a transaction:
7. Lessons Learned
Invite people to participate in your design process
When you invite stakeholders into the design process, it’s much easier to get buy-ins. Having product managers join research and design workshops means they hear user pain points directly, closing the gap between business and user needs. When both sides feel heard, solutions truly work for everyone.
Users over business, when you can’t solve for both*
We faced a design conflict: the business wanted to collect transaction tracking data, but users found it too much work on top of their already heavy workload. The result? Users abandoned the tool or gamed the system, creating false data that hurt business goals.
Despite the poor user experience, the business refused to compromise. But their approach backfired—without user adoption, business objectives could not be achieved.
I proposed a different strategy: solve for users first. Prove value and adoption. Once you have traction, then solve for data collection. As one user put it: "If it doesn't work for us, we won't use it."
* Just so we are clear, I am not suggesting one is more important than the other, but rather, it’s a strategic approach to problem solving.
This taught me that when a problem feels too big, break it down into smaller problems and tackle them one at a time. As Google puts it: “Follow the users, and the rest will come.”