Redesigning a Property Management App Users Had Stopped Trusting
TL;DR
UX Designer
iOS & Android
Figma
Under NDA.
Project details have been withheld or altered. Design work, reasoning, and screens shown are my own.
A product with no design ownership
The property management app is used by residents to pay bills, register visitors, book facilities, and access other estate services. It had a low Play Store rating and recurring complaints. I was brought in to fix it.
There was no clean brief.
Developers and the General Manager had been shipping changes with no design review, leaving a pile of short-term fixes that contradicted each other. The real problem wasn't the dated interface — it was that no one owned the design.
Three things I could fix
// The interface felt untrustworthy
Residents compared the app unfavourably to others they used every day. The visuals were old enough to hurt trust in the product itself — not just how it looked, but how reliable it felt.
// Visitor registration punished regular users
The clearest, most documented complaint: residents with recurring visitors — domestic helpers, family, regular guests — had to re-enter the same details every time. No memory, no shortcut, no way to mark someone as a regular. One resident put it plainly:
"Why always need to key in register name and number.. why can't just make an option to re-register regular visitor.. just like the other apps"
— Play Store review, December 2024
For residents who registered visitors weekly, it was the most-used feature in the app — and the worst one.
// The payment feature was incomplete
Transaction history and top-up were missing from billing. A feature meant to help residents manage dues had shipped without the two things that make dues manageable.
What shaped what I could fix
Developers and the General Manager shipped changes without design input, so inconsistencies kept piling up.
A third-party billing provider caused ongoing instability in the payment flow. That was an infrastructure issue — I could design around it, but not fix it.
Timeline pressure was constant. When leadership wanted something shipped, it shipped, old patterns and all.
My call:
Focus on what I could actually fix, and not claim credit for the rest.
What I redesigned, and how
// Visual system overhaul
I rebuilt the interface with a consistent purple-toned design system — cleaner card hierarchy, updated icons, and a billing card that shows what's owed right away. The old layout buried amounts and due dates in plain text below the fold.
Outstanding amount shown as plain text. No due date context, no visual weight. Users had to scan to find what they owed.
Gradient billing card with amount, due date, and a visibility toggle — the primary piece of information on the home screen.
// Visitor registration
I added persistent visitor data. Names and numbers are now stored and shown at registration, so residents can re-register a regular visitor in far fewer steps. This is the change I'm most confident about — the problem was clear, the fix was targeted, the result was measurable.
Zero repeat complaints about the visitor registration flow since the feature went live. The specific complaint that generated a one-star review has not resurfaced.
// Payment feature completion
I designed the missing payment features — transaction history and top-up — and restructured the flow end-to-end. Billing instability from the third-party provider kept generating complaints after launch, but those trace to infrastructure errors, not the interface I delivered.
// Quick actions and navigation
I turned the home screen menu into an editable Quick Actions grid. The old design showed eight equally-weighted options with no hierarchy — facility bookings sat next to bill payments for no real reason.
What the design actually changed
Complaints stopped
Persistent visitor data; re-registration now a fraction of original steps. Zero repeat complaints post-launch.
Feature completed
Transaction history and top-up now available. Ongoing billing complaints trace to third-party infrastructure, not the design.
Interface modernised
Consistent design system, updated iconography, billing card surfaced as the dominant home screen element.
Unchanged
Remaining reviews describe server errors and billing failures — the third-party infrastructure problem I identified early and couldn't resolve.
What I'd do differently
// Establish a design review gate earlier
Most of the quality loss came from decisions made before I ever saw them. I'd push earlier for a lightweight approval step before anything goes live.
// Make the billing problem someone's responsibility
I treated the billing instability as out of scope since I couldn't fix it alone. Right call day-to-day, wrong call for the project — I should have documented the impact and put a provider switch on the roadmap. Out of scope doesn't mean not your problem.
// Instrument before redesigning
There were no baseline metrics, so I prioritised by complaint volume — it works, but it's noisier than real data. Basic analytics would have let me rank fixes by actual impact.