Turton Real Estate
What
Turton is a commercial real estate company located in Sacramento, California that focuses on providing as much information to its clients as possible. Whether it be multi-family homes, acres of land or office spaces, Turton has a long list of available properties in the Sacramento area.
Problem
Turton has been established since 2010, and with their focus being on "providing clients with the best possible information to maximize the value of their commercial real estate assets," they needed a website to reinforce this goal. More information, more visuals, and better usability were focal requests. Finally, as more of their new clients are younger and expect a modern digital platform, their website needs to accommodate these users so they can continue to grow and compete.
Process
Once the desires and concerns from the client were voiced, it was time to consider the user. WHO was our audience, and WHAT did they want?
Audience
Well-educated, wealthy, 30+ age group, ambitious, innovative, modern, futuristic
Considering our audience and the growth the Turton would like to receive, a simple and straightforward website would be the best approach. Something that would be easy to use and understand, but still interesting and attention-grabbing. We wanted to veer away from video and animation because we felt that instead of adding value, this would only take away from the focus.
Project Scope
Brand System
Front End Development
Industry Research
Custom Photography
UX + Visual Design
Feedback from our team and from Turton helped us to determine what pages should be added, removed, or altered. This process always allows for growth and change but is crucial to set the course for the UX/UI.
Once we had a clear idea for the flow, our team began to dig into Adobe XD. XD was an important tool that helped us to construct the website and show in basic terms how the UX/UI worked without committing to the development side of things. The benefit of having a link to easily share and present also helped to receive useful feedback and response from their team.
Brent Rector and I each worked on two separate Adobe XD websites to share with Turton. The idea was to provide them with two ideas that shared the same architecture and similar UX/UI but also captured different design elements and characteristics.
Solution
Turton significantly evolved from its initial proof to become a more image-focused website to create a vision for what all Sacramento contains. The final website showcases the face value of Turton as their focus is to emphasize the relationship between the buyer and the seller. Navigating the properties page, it is again focused primarily on the visual elements of the location to help the user better picture themselves in the environment. The location map allows the user to see where they would be located and the proximity. Finally, educating the user on what the demographics are, quickly familiarizes the user with the area.
Overall, Turton helped me grow immensely in understanding the world of UX/UI. As a designer, it's so tempting to reach into the visual side of things foremost, rather than consider how the user will interact. Utilizing wire-framing, XD, and collaborative response, it became easier to determine how the under would best respond. A big take-away was working with the web developers. Being pixel-perfect accurate was so crucial in delivering the best files for the developer to work with. Being thorough and concise in my explanation also helped me to best articulate how the website should work and what we needed to be coded. Lastly, working with clients on building their website is so important to understand all of the information and materials they'll require. Considering more helps to set them up for success from the beginning as it is so much more difficult to add on later.
