ANYWHERE REAL ESTATE INC.
AT-A-GLANCE
At Anywhere RE, I led 0→1 design and strategy of Team Collaboration for Agent Workplace—creating shared Project spaces, permission roles, and ownership structures that enable teams to collaborate at scale while maintaining trust and security.
I pitched"Collaboration features" to be prioritized as 1 in 4 of 2026 roadmap focus.
ROLE & TEAM
Lead Product Designer, working with 1 UXR, 1 PM, 2 Engineers, 2 System Architects
SKILLS
Systems thinking
UX Strategy
Information Architecture Interaction Design
TIMELINE
Oct 2025 - Jan 2026
USER PROBLEM
Agent Workplace (AW) is a productivity enterprise tool used by real estate agents across Anywhere brokerages to manage leads, transactions, and their daily workflows. While 30% agents work in teams, AW was built for solo workflows, creating silos, duplicated work, and communication gaps.
😵💫
'“I spend a lot of mental energy keeping track of who’s doing what—and updates change before I can relay them”
lead agent
Jessie
😮💨
“I have to manually track and update my own project space. Managing 10 leads at once, things easily fall out of sync.”
agent
Sam
FINAL SOLUTIONS
1/
A single, collaborative workspace replace siloed workflows to reduce duplicated work and manual handoffs.
2/
Action-based permissions reflect real team structures, allowing collaborators to work efficiently while safeguarding sensitive transaction data.
3/
Audit logs show who took what action and when, giving team leads visibility while maintaining trust without blocking team autonomy.
4/
Audit logs show who took what action and when, giving team leads visibility while maintaining trust without blocking team autonomy.
INITIAL BRIEF
Initial prototype revealed 2 core needs:
- Collaboration in a Project space (adding, editing access, and removing collaborators)
- Team Management (assigning tasks and managing collaborators)
A combined experience overwhelmed and disrupted users of their day-to-day work 😵💫
product thinking - THE FOUNDATION
Defining "Collaboration (sharing) vs "Teams"
product thinking - THE LOGIC
Teams are small (2-10 collaborators)
Roles vary significantly across teams: Agents, Transaction Coordinators, and External Contractors…
Leads are selective about what they share:
✅ Operational context
🚫 Transaction actions & commission splits info
Based on these insights, I designed 4 permission levels that reflect real team behavior, protect sensitive actions, and support collaboration with accountability.
Considerations also included how permissions would cascade down to vertical actions (To-dos assigning, Activity logs, Timelines log, managing info, Transaction send out, Marketing material actions,
so, WHY does THIS MATTER?
It became evident "Collaborations" touched foundational systems across AW. Shipping this as a quick feature would have introduced long-term complexity and risk. Partnering with, PM, we align on priorities, and roadmap it as a core 2026 initiative that I continue to drive in close collaboration with Engineering and System Architecture.
Now that the backend logic is set, Let's redefine the brief, FOCUSING ON "SHARING"
🤝
GOAL #1
Sharing Project space with ease
🔐
GOAL #2
Security for sensitive data
🔍
GOAL #3
Transparency for access & activity
DEFINING THE MAIN SHARING FLOW
Our user base predominantly consists of users aged 50–60, many of whom prefer simple and familiar interaction patterns. For core flow, I tested 2 approaches: a consolidated flow and a separated two-step flow. User feedback showed that the three-step flow felt more intuitive and easier to understand, while still remaining efficient.
change of SECURITY REQUIREMENT FROM BUSINESS
This policy shift redefined our user model—unlicensed users were no longer collaborators and instead existed only as saved contacts, similar to clients.
Separate Collaborator list and People bar
Collaborators →dedicated collaborator list, managing people who have access to Project space.
People Bar → surface quick contacts (clients + contractors)
Simplify "add collaborator" flow
Contractors and agent teammates lived in separate APIs, requiring users to make an early decision when adding collaborators. By removing this split, we eliminated unnecessary steps and reduced cognitive load.
design decisions
I facilitated cross-team knowledge-sharing sessions to align on insights, validate technical feasibility, stress-test the permission logic, and ensure the solution met business goals. Below are some highlights of key iterations:
Reducing risk in defining permission setting at a glance
💡
Clear labels highlighted sensitive access like commission splits instead of generic descriptions
💡
"Limited edit" as the default matched most collaborators’ needs and prevented overpermissioning
Visibility enables trust and accountability
"My teammates handle most of daily work. I want visibility without slowing them down.”
Users
You've reached the end… how about another story?
ACTIVISION BLIZZARD / 2024
