RealPage - Leasing, Renewals and eSign
Reframing a Tactical Feature into a Strategic Product System
Role:
Product Design Lead
Team(s):
1 Designer
1 PO
8 Engineers
Timeline:
1 year
Impact:
>$8M in savings • UX adoption surge • Org-wide design principles
Context
In the wake of COVID-19, RealPage faced a critical shift—leasing offices went dark, and renewal paperwork moved to "drop-off only." Digital demand surged, but the experience was slow, fragmented, and overly reliant on DocuSign, with projected costs exceeding $8M annually.
Stepping in as lead product designer across two engineering teams, I reframed what was initially scoped as a simple UI reskin into a strategic overhaul. We addressed legacy system gaps, eliminated redundancy, and built a unified digital leasing experience designed for scale, usability, and long-term value.
This wasn’t just a UI redesign. It was primed for a strategic reset.
The Challenge
What was initially scoped as a minor enhancement quickly revealed deeper issues. Through rapid interviews and lean research, it became clear both renters and leasing agents were struggling.
Renewals and applications were treated as separate flows, duplicating effort and confusing users. Internally, siloed teams and outdated assumptions about in-person workflows made alignment—and progress—difficult in an increasingly remote-first world.
Strategic Insight and Actions
To support this I put a plan into action that identified deep workflow redundancies and user Instead of retrofitting features, I asked: What if renewals felt like pressing an easy button—not starting over?
Partnering with a user researcher, we ran discovery interviews and usability studies with renters, leasing agents, and property managers. We uncovered repeated inputs, unclear handoffs, and workflow gaps between applications and renewals.
These insights led to clear design patterns and success metrics that reshaped both the product and our definition of a seamless experience.
Research from auditing existing flows, legal compliance, and leasing manager interviews culminated in a matrix that exposed overlaps, redundancies and clear opportunities, not only to simplify but assisted in the generation of a larger RealPage's lifetime renter value.
With these findings I was able to advocate for unification of the workflows between applications and renewals into a single, adaptive experience, to capture once, and bring renewals into much more of a review and renew workflow, rather than starting at square one each time.
This both proposed a cultural shift at Realpage from “document completion” to “data-powered decisions” so that we could leverage the reuse of known data and eliminate redundant steps.
I crafted guiding principles to bring the team along on the journey and ensure buy-in.
“Repetition is pain”
If we already know something, don’t ask again. This became a north star for how we approached form autofill, progressive disclosure, and system memory.
“Forms can be fun-ctional”
Forms are product surfaces, not admin tasks. Treat them with care and attention and appropriate cognitive chunking, not administrative overhead.
Cultural Contribution
Beyond delivering a high-impact product, this work assisted with maturation for how RealPage now approaches their entire suite.
Conducted and improved on repeatable design rituals in a remote landscape that elevated design’s influence upstream
Evangelized the idea of “product as platform” or building experiences that scale horizontally across use cases
Assisted with composition of early iterations in RealPage's Lifetime value storytelling
