Myself along with two others consulted for CoreLogic on a concept design with the goal being; to connect every person, project, and organisation in the Australian construction industry.
 

My role
I was part of the research team conducting user interviews, user testing, and data analysis and visualisation. I was also responsible for the design of the website and producing major deliverables such as Concept Map, Wireframes, and Digital Prototypes that I made using Sketch and InVision. I presented this with two other UX designers to the client in April 2018.

Cordell Connect, a CoreLogic product, is an online database consisting of researched construction, infrastructure, and building project information in Australia and New Zealand. 

It relies on information that is provided to them for free, to sell to their users. They have a team of researchers that call and gather information, which is then manually entered into their system.

The Problem:
The outdated method of how information is collected, coupled with the fact that data providers have no incentive to provide this, results in missing and inaccurate information.

A survey with 509 of Cordell Connect’s current users was conducted.

This information dictated what questions we asked in our user interviews and gave us valuable insight into the types of people who use Cordell Connect. This also helped shape our initial ideas on which personas we had to target.

Why do customers use Cordell Connect?

Who uses Cordell Connect? (We only looked at the construction industry percentages.)

16 User Interviews were conducted with 6 staff members, 1 architect, 2 construction workers, and 7 suppliers and manufacturers.

This validated some of our assumptions and also our survey results. It helped guide discussion on what the platform needed as a minimum to address concerns of the users, as well as reaching the goal of the client.

The key findings we took away were;

How customers find leads
• Word of mouth
• References from previous clients
 

What customers care about
• Quality, professionalism & cost
• Meeting face to face
• Trustworthy and likeable
• Managing relationships

Why don’t data providers want to share info?
• Have no incentive
• Don’t realise the value added to their business
• Feel content with their current network

Fear of poaching
• Developers don’t want to share their suppliers
• Suppliers don’t want to share their clients
 

What Cordell staff have to say
• Limited to how much they can ask and only being able to ask the most important questions
• Managing relationships with data providers is vital
 

What can Cordell do better?
• Be more timely and thorough with project updates
• Provide accurate contact details on projects
• Provide details on sub-contractors
• Allow more market research within Cordell

Understanding our users

Now that we understand the core of the user’s problems and the logic behind their motivations, we created a concept map to illustrate the relationship between everyone involved in a project and the project itself.

We know from our user interviews that when builders are looking for suppliers, manufacturers and sub-contractors to hire, what’s important is quality of service reliability, cost, and the relationship between them.

From the suppliers, manufacturers and sub-contractors point of view, what they want to do is to connect with the builder, to impress them and to prove their work

Currently this is done through word of mouth, pitching, references, showing their portfolio which shows number of jobs and size of jobs.

These are all done outside of Cordell Connect.

How can we incorporate this into it?

The solution

Move away from the traditional model of acting as an information provider and head towards a networking platform where people within the construction industry can...

• Network,
• Showcase the previous work they’ve done,
• Conduct market research and
• Find new sales leads.

By companies realising the networking and business growth opportunity that this platform can provide they will now be incentivised to provide information on projects on their own accord which should alleviate the issues that the current product is facing ie. missing/inaccurate/outdated information.

Currently businesses are reluctant to share who they work with, but if they can see the opportunities that this platform can provide, they will now be more open to publicising themselves and who their past clients are. This should also lead to a more competitive market by offering businesses a wider range of companies to work with.

The challenge

Create a self-sustaining network that provides value for data providers as well as current customers.

Design

We brainstormed features by page and put them under four categories; must have, should have, could have, and won’t have. 

From this list I started wire framing. We conducted four usability tests on the wireframes to see if the features we included matched what users expected to see, as well as if we were missing any they thought should be included.

Wireframe usability test findings: 

Project page

• Missing information ie. project stage, type of project, project ID number

• Needs exact date of commencement and completion,

• Downloadable documents and images,

• Users should have the ability to download, share and favourite project.

Home/Feed page

• Missing information

• ‘New project’ is too limited. ‘Past, current and future projects’ would be better for sales lead generating.

2nd iteration usability test findings: 

Project page

• Needs to give users an option to edit page

• More information on the role of sub-contractors, and suppliers and manufacturers should be provided

• No navigation to go back a page

Profile page

• Information is doubled up in places and makes it confusing

• Endorsements is too much of a focus

• Hard to read the navigation and some of the text on the sidebar

Next steps

• Quick wins - address achievable UI issues of current product

• Paid advertising on network platform

• Further testing of the network platform

CoreLogic will pave the way to a new era within the construction industry.