A Place for Mom

Community Central is an internal tool for "Community" partners to create, manage, and track their listings and leads. As the Head of Design at APFM, my team focused on improving internal tools for our customers. Community Central, which helps partner communities manage their profile pages, needed significant updates.

The platform was outdated, confusing, and used old technology. We developed a complete redesign that included user flow reviews, new personas, improved information architecture, and a fresh visual style along with updated design guidelines. Our work covered both desktop and mobile versions.

My team developed detailed segmented personas and comprehensive journey maps, and we conducted in-depth user studies to help identify the specific areas where the current sites were missing the mark. We wanted to deeply understand what our users were thinking and feeling at the various steps along a very emotional journey that they experience. With this valuable insight in hand, we then set out to completely update the visual brand treatment, define and create new style guides, and develop pattern components while overhauling each site to enhance the overall user experience.

Key Insights & Drivers

  • Outdated UI

  • Ineffective mobile experience

  • Difficult navigation

  • Mixed messaging and confusing brand

  • Difficult to manage accounts and leads

  • Poor search experience

Dashboard: Decisions & Impact

Updates

  • Profile completeness score

  • Leads categorized by type

  • Notifications

  • Upcoming schedule

  • Community list

Results

  • Ability to more quickly access timely leads

  • Quickly see lead count and tours

  • Quickly jump between multiple communities

Leads: Decisions & Impact

Updates

  • Updated navigation bar and search

  • More intuitive segmentation of content

  • Cleaner UI and content hierarchy

  • Addition of best-practice advice & page scores

  • Improved page load times

  • Improved leads readability 

  • Addition of visual cues to aid in productivity

  • Modernized UI with filter and sort

  • Designed for mobile

Results

  • Measurable uptick in unique metadata updates

  • Noticeable improvement in image uploads

  • Positive feedback from focus groups and user study

  • Less confusing to manage leads based on feedback

  • Better ability to manage, sort, and understand status