Overview

ReallyONE, a real estate broker founded and operated by a group of veteran agents, partnered with Facet Digital to re-imagine their brand and give life to their vision of an all-new web application meant to disrupt the real estate industry by automating the process of buying and selling real estate online and charging sellers significantly lower commission fees totaling only 1%.

The Backstory

ReallyONE was founded by a family leadership team that has been in the real estate game for nearly three decades. Their vision is to disrupt the real estate industry the way e-Trade did for stock brokerages and Expedia did for travel agencies. They want to automate the process of buying and selling homes online in a day and age where the tech savvy customer has all the tools and know-how to do their own research, and doesn’t feel the need to pay 6% commission for an agent to fill out paperwork for them.

According to ReallyONE CEO, Sam Owens, “The Internet has taken much of the guesswork out of buying a home. Online sites allow you to take virtual tours and gather tons of data so the decision is generally made before you preview the home. A Realtor’s traditional role does not apply in most of today’s market.”

Overview

New York Times best-selling authors, Drs. Les and Leslie Parrott partnered with Facet Digital to develop a marriage assessment web application based on the ‘Saving Your Marriage Before It Starts’ book and video series.

The Backstory

More than a million couples have used the award-winning Saving Your Marriage Before It Starts (SYMBIS for short) book and video series in preparation for a strong and passionate marriage. Drs. Les and Leslie Parrott (L&L) envisioned an opportunity to apply their proven strategies into an application that provides couples with a deeper understanding of each other. “We wanted to take our experience counseling couples and create an assessment app to prepare couples for lifelong love, and we need a development partner to craft our vision into a compelling application that is useful for engaged couples and facilitators,” says Dr. Les Parrott.

The Challenge

The Les and Leslie team knew they needed a partner; one that understood their vision, had the skill-set and methods to build a high quality product within a short 10-week development period. The app needed to meet the needs of the engaged couple, the assessment facilitator, and the SYMBIS administrator overseeing the entire platform. It also needed to scale without over-engineering.

Our Approach

For two weeks, L&L Executive Director Ryan Farmer and Facet designer Leif Jensen closely collaborated on the design phase, wire-framing every detail of the experience until they had a solid MVP that met their budget and release schedule. The wireframes created during this phase, which we call “Phase I”, produced the necessary information for Facet’s engineers to create a database ERD, network architecture diagrams, cloud operations cost estimates, software stack specifications, and a detailed cost estimate for front and backend development. They also produced some pixel-perfect mockups of the application, which allowed the team to start getting customer feedback, and even some pre-sales.

At Facet Digital, we highly recommend doing a thorough Phase I design exercise. It reduces overall project risk by serving as a compass that always keeps the entire team pointed toward the destination. Having wireframes at this stage allowed Ryan to demo the experience to early prospects, recording usability feedback and validation, and even closing pre-sales with many of them.

The Result

The assessment application focuses on couples, facilitators, and the SYMBIS admin users who track all the transactions within the product. It usually takes a couple about 30 minutes each to complete the assessment from their desktop or tablet. Then a facilitator prints out a personalized assessment report and counsels the couples, providing countless insights about the relationship. “Facet took our vision and ideas and crafted them into an application that was simple to use and understand, yet powerful enough to scale for success,” says Ryan Farmer, Executive Director.

Facilitators use the application for assessment counselor training, certification, and managing the couples in their care. Quality is preserved in this ecosystem by spoon-feeding SYMBIS facilitator curriculum in digestible increments where certification can be done at one’s own pace. Couples take a 30-minute assessment and walk away with beautifully personalized insights and road map to make their marriage everything it was meant to be. Helping engaged and newly married couples just got easier. You’ll love the depth and breadth of this sophisticated instrument.

Overview

Christopher Burgess, founder of Prevendra and former executive within the CIA, chose Facet Digital as his trusted end-to-end product development team to bring to life his vision of an easy-to-use online life-planning product that could store your most sensitive information with an unprecedented level of security.

The Backstory

We all have bank accounts, physical assets, credit cards, investments, wills, documents, mortgages, and an ever-expanding online footprint made up social networks, shopping accounts, blogs, etc. How could your family possibly be able to manage all of these things, and know what you want done with them, in the event of your extended absence or death?

“During my time with the CIA I had to travel near and far, often times with minimal advance notice. Without advance notice, it was difficult to create lists of accounts and access protocols for my family in the event something came up during my absence or if something happened to me. What we did was create a system of red folders for use by my wife.”, explains Christopher Burgess. He goes on to explain a sophisticated protocol for keeping his physical red folders organized and secured through a manual two-factor system that he conceived during his time as an intelligence officer…and thus the idea for Red Folder was born.

According to Burgess, “The type of information you need to store for your family and loved ones in the event of your unavailability is a treasure trove for hackers and identity thieves. In order to bring my system into an online product, it was critically important to partner with a deeply technical product development team that could architect and build a rock-solid cybersecurity system and still make it look and feel like a consumer product.”

The Challenge

Prevendra knew they needed to partner with an end-to-end product team — one with the experience to manage the entire process from concept to delivery, that knew how to keep the budget lean without cutting corners on security and scalability, all while designing a simple user interface for exposing potentially complex concepts to a non-technical demographic. The system would need to stand up to the scrutiny of industry-leading security experts, and the app would need to meet the usability needs of both the high-tech user and the elderly non-technical user alike. And it all needed to be built quickly on a lean startup budget.

Our Approach

After a few initial face-to-face “war room” discovery sessions with Christopher, Facet co-founders Leif and Scott got to work building out the initial feature definition for Red Folder’s MVP (Minimum Viable Product). Through a collaborative process of detailed wire-framing, pixel-perfect design mockups, and user storyboarding, Leif and Christopher were able to produce a compelling product story and feature set for Facet engineers Scott and Jeremy to architect to. This “Phase 1” discovery process was key in framing the problem scope such that the software architects could design a technology blueprint that would enable the specified feature with a focus on a rock-solid security system as it’s foundation. Product development commenced using the Kanban methodology with a focus on efficient just-in-time delivery and fast iteration and feedback cycles. Post-launch, the same process is used to rapidly adapt to market feedback.

The Result

The result is a leading-edge security architecture that has been blessed by Fortune 500 Chief Security Officers and crypto-security pundits as “as bulletproof as it gets”, with an end-to-end user experience primarily targeted at non-technical users in a way that hides the complexity of the security system while still providing the utmost peace of mind.

Users are guided through a sophisticated on-boarding process, covering numerous security details with ease, and within minutes are educated about what types of information they should store, and how it stays secure through Red Folder’s patent-pending authentication and authorization mechanism. “Designees” — individuals you trust to access your information on your behalf in case of emergency — can use the site for free, and can only access your accounts using their own identity according to your policy using an innovative time-lock protocol. You never need to share your password with them.

Customers have been quick to realize the benefits of Red Folder, and have been spreading the word by inviting their Designees. Channel partners such as estate attorneys, financial planners, insurance companies, HR departments, and military/law-enforcement organizations have been raving about the benefit of the Red Folder system to their clientele.

Highlights

• Automated user on-boarding, walking new customers through normally complex setup features.
• Contextual user education, covering new technology concepts like two- factor authentication, encryption keys, and designee invitation.
• Measurable conversion funnels.
• Channel partner and affiliate tracking and reporting.
• Bulletproof security.